Five Things We Learned From Kendrick Lamar, Florence + The Machine And More At British Summer Time In London

The annual British Summer Time in Hyde Park event has rolled around again, meaning the central London venue has just featured performances from Massive Attack and Patti Smith, Kendrick Lamar and Florence + The Machine and Carole King. Next weekend you can catch Mumford & Sons, Wolf Alice, Stevie Wonder and Pharrell. We went down on Saturday July 2 to catch Cat Power, Jamie xx, Kendrick and Florence. Here’s what we learned.

Jamie XX provided the most British moment of the day

“Oh my gosh!” Yes, the boy from Putney got everyone off their mash at Hyde Park this weekend, dropping Skepta and Kendrick Lamar bars into ‘I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)’ and delivering a trippy remix of his Gil Scott-Heron collaboration ‘I’ll Take Care Of U’. But probably the best moment was when the skies opened and we all got soaked as hundred of people waved umbrellas about or allowed their pints to fill up with rainwater while dancing to the steel drums of ‘Obvs’. At this moment, one of the big screens showed someone in the audience waving an EU flags and everyone cheered. Sob.

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Cat Power has a thing for singing with two mics

The singer-songwriter’s mid-afternoon set, which gloriously coincided with the sunniest point of the day, featured beauts such as ‘The Greatest and ‘Manhattan’ and demonstrated her ability to throw her voice in a weirdly powerful and alien away. She achieved it by singing into two mics, which kind of double-tracked her vocals. Don’t know why we’re telling you this, really – it was so impressive you probably heard it from wherever you were on Saturday, even if you were kicking it on the Isle of Skye at the time.

The BST crowd is quite into nakedness

As we milled about between sets, NME overheard one jovial punter suggest to a friend, “See how many nipples you can spot”. Well, we saw six: two women climbed separately clambered onto pals’ shoulders and took their tops off during Florence’s hippyish performance, inspiring a bloke to do the same. He waved his shirt above his head, drawing applause. Bravo, sir, bravo.

Singing “DRANK” back at Kenrick Lamar is the most fun ever

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You know the bit in ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’ when he lists things he likes to do and intersperses them with the word “drank”? Remember: he likes to have a “sit down” (drank), then “stand up” (drank), then enjoy a little “pass out” (drank) before ultimately he’ll “wake up” (drank). Anyway, the Compton rapper got everyone to bellow the “DRANK” bit and everyone – including a confused elderly man stood near NME – took up the challenged with relish. And that’s before Kendrick got us jumping up and down to ‘King Kunta’.

Florence Welch will make hippies of us all

This show was the last of her current tour, and her biggest ever concert in the capital – a fact that visibly overjoyed the London native – so she was firing on all cylinders. She delivered a massive rendition of ‘You’ve Got The Love’, asked everyone to kiss and hug each other, danced about with no shoes on, politely requested that we put our phones away and waved a rainbow flag to ‘Spectrum’, which features the lyric “love is love”. The latter was surely a show of solidarity for the 50 victims of a homophobic attack at a nightclub in Florida last month. Florence’s message was clear: one love.

BST is sponsored by Playstation. Check out Spotify available on PlayStation Music on your PlayStation®4 or PlayStation®3. For more details on PlayStation Music, visit playstation.com/Music.

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