Meet the Women Who Brought Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out Concert to Amazon Music
A couple of weeks before Dr. Dre whispered “I see dead people” to introduce the first-ever live performance of “Not Like Us” and send the Kia Forum crowd into a frenzy, an early June phone call from an old friend got the wheels churning to bring Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out concert to Amazon Music.
Tim Hinshaw spent five years as Amazon Music’s head of hip-hop and R&B before leaving his post in 2023 to launch the Free Lunch agency. Free Lunch teamed up with Lamar to seek out a livestreaming partner for the Pop Out & Friends concert, and Hinshaw made it a family affair when turning to his former employer.
Two of the individuals tasked with bringing the Juneteenth concert to fruition were Sierra Lever, who succeeded Hinshaw’s role at Amazon and now leads the company’s R&B and hip-hop brand Rotation, along with the company’s global head of content and artist marketing Kirdis Postelle.
Before eventually landing at Amazon, Postelle spent 17 years as general manager of Dr. Dre’s record label Aftermath Entertainment. Amazon Music also served as the streaming home of K. Dot’s The Big Steppers Tour stop in Paris in October 2022, so the familiarity from all parties was already established, and a reunion made sense.
“Having worked for Dre for so long [and] Kendrick has worked with me in the past — they know my bar for excellence is really high,” she confidently boasts. “They knew we were gonna deliver exactly what [Kendrick] wanted.”
The plan came together in a matter of days, and things were quickly put into motion with all teams involved working in symbiosis when it came to the global livestream.
“Moving Amazon, these are big wheels to make turn – to get everybody on board,” Postelle asserts. “I feel like we had 10 days to turn this around. Get the marketing on point, Prime Video on point, to get [Amazon’s livestreaming partner] Twitch on point. To get all these teams rallied behind this one thing.”
While refusing to pull back the curtain on fires that had to be put out in the days leading up to the concert, Postelle allows that “there were some really late nights and some really early mornings trying to get this done.”
June 19 quickly approached, and while most of corporate America had Juneteenth off, it was showtime for Amazon Music and Kendrick Lamar at Kia Forum. Postelle anxiously watched along at home with millions of fans as her Oregon State University alum colleague was on site outside the Inglewood arena, calling plays overseeing the operation from the trucks.
K. Dot had the culture in the palm of his hand as he ran through the live debuts of his Drake psychoanalysis shakedown “Euphoria,” his atomic guest verse on Future & Metro Boomin’s “Like That” and, of course, his climactic “Not Like Us” killshot”– running back that last one an additional four times.
Dr. Dre’s arrival brought upon the biggest surprise of the night, with Dot welcoming his mentor to the stage for a mini-set of ‘90s classics “Still D.R.E.” and “California Love,” before Dre returned the favor and introduced “Not Like Us.”
Seeing the pair of Compton deities on stage together especially hit home for Postelle, an Aftermath Entertainment alum. “I got that pang of nostalgia,” she admits. “I couldn’t have asked for a better hip-hop history moment for myself.”
Kendrick’s victory lap reportedly broke Amazon Music’s streaming record when it comes to live events. Without putting a specific figure on it, the team confirmed there were “millions and millions of people watching,” as the live broadcast posted the most minutes watched of any Amazon Music production ever on Twitch and Prime Video.
And yes, Postelle and Lever – along with the Amazon Music team – saw some of the viral memes joking about how Amazon executives didn’t understand exactly what they signed up for, with Pirus, Crips and various gang sets linking up on stage together, alongside other L.A. luminaries.
“We talked about it a little bit,” Postelle admits. “I saw some meme, ‘Amazon executives didn’t know what they were getting themselves into’ and we laughed about it because the truth is we’re the executives.”
Lever adds: “People would be surprised who some of the executives are at Amazon Music. The reason we’re able to make quick decisions is because we have people who are experts in the genre.”
The phone continues to ring as Amazon looks for its next cultural moment in the live streaming sector. However, they’re not worried about working with Kendrick on the Pop Out potentially severing their relationship with Drake, whom they previously collaborated with on the Larry Hoover Benefit concert alongside Ye in December 2021. ”This was about culture for us,” Postelle says. “ I don’t think that [feuding element] even came into it. We don’t take sides.”
While Amazon released HD footage of Kendrick’s epic debut of “Not Like Us,” the entire live stream is still missing in an official capacity for fans hoping to rewatch the historic show. Somehow, Amazon didn’t foresee the craze surrounding the concert and is now working toward releasing the concert’s livestream in its entirety on their platform.
“We didn’t anticipate, and neither did Kendrick, this kind of outpouring for the video on demand,” Postelle explains. “We hadn’t planned for it. Everyone is actively — between Kendrick’s team and our team — figuring out what it’s going to take to get this up.”
With weeks to look back on the concert, Lever hailed the Pop Out experience as the “biggest cultural moment this year,” while Postelle championed being part of it as one of the “top five amazing things” she’s accomplished in her decorated career.
“Not Like Us” isn’t going anywhere either, as the Drake diss returned to top the Billboard Hot 100 and is a bona fide song of the summer candidate. The Pop Out concert served as the perfect playground for Kendrick’s championship parade while promoting West coast unity with his love letter to Black culture. With concert ticket prices sky-rocketing across the industry, livestreaming shows and bringing fans intimate experiences from thousands of miles away is providing a more important service than ever.
“When you think of underserved communities that don’t necessarily have the capability to go to a show in person, this is an outlet for fans to continue to dive deeper into having these moments with their favorite artists,” Lever asserts. And Postelle guarantees: “The strength of livestreaming is going to continue to grow.”
Michael Saponara
Billboard
