Cover Image: Kendrick Lamar opens his Spilt Milk headline set with cinematic intensity, delivering one of the biggest shows of the year. Photo by Stuart Mckay.

Spilt Milk
Claremont Showgrounds,
7 December 2025

There are festival headliners and then there’s Kendrick Lamar.

When you put an act as big as Kendrick at the top of the bill, you certainly broaden festival appeal, but it’s bound to also shine a light on the festival’s depth and questions of whether they’ve spent everything on one act.

To Spilt Milk’s credit, they backed up their monster signing with another big name in Doechii. The Grammy Award-winning Top Dawg signee brought nearly as spectacular a live production as K-Dot, with theatrical moving “swamp” parts and a heap of personality. Hit single Denial is a River was a particularly clever collab with DJ/hype MC Miss Milan, the two essentially exchanging an upbeat conversation in what was arguably the track of the day.

Elsewhere it was thinner on the ground, particularly with the dance acts. Australia’s hottest upcoming talent Ninajirachi was the exception, but with only a hundred or so punters drawn to her lit set at the tiny Derbyshire Stage outpost, and a clash with Doechii, she’s one we’ll look forward to catching more of next time. 

The hyped Sara Landry, meanwhile, brought an impressive visual show but her banging hard trance with deviations into techno was cheesy at best; Skin on Skin was more fun but also intense, and lacked the showmanship needed at the Basquiat Stage big tent.

That could also be said for Schoolboy Q at the same arena; Collard Greens was fun in a set that otherwise dragged. Genesis Owusu made much better use of the bespoke screen set up there and his live show was a hit with new track Death Cult Zombie and big single Get Inspired the picks.

More-so than dance music, it was a big day for hip hop, and also the pop acts who dominated early. Star of HBO’s Euphoria Dominic Fike made the most of his late arvo timeslot, his hits Babydoll and Mama’s Boy highlights (the latter in a big finale that had him shredding guitar while rolling around on his back). 

Nessa Barrett delivered some cool mid-arvo Lana Del Rey-vibes and emo-pop via Die First and Dying on the Inside, while Sofia Isella was a minor revelation with her feminist beat poet ravings and animated performance, railing against the patriarchy on The Doll People and Hot Gum. Keep an ear out for these two early 20-somethings.

But let’s not confuse things: this was the Kendrick Lamar show. And from the moment he appeared onscreen rapping Wacced Out Murals backstage, his was one of the biggest shows of the year. Pyrotechnics flew and fireworks lit up the night sky as he jammed 22 tracks into just 70-minutes (yes, he needed a much longer set).

Very much a 2025 setlist, Drake got crucified explosively on Euphoria and again in set closer Not Like Us, while tracks from 2024 album GNX featured eight times with TV Off and Reincarnated the standouts. Humble was a singalong fave and Love a uniquely tender moment amongst the bangers, but it was the six good kid, m.A.A.d city numbers from 2012 that made this a truly memorable occasion, as Backseat Freestyle, Swimming Pools (Drank), Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe, Money Trees, Poetic Justice and an unexpected remix of m.A.A.d city owned the night.

Kendrick is still the king and all’s well that ends well, right? If Spilt Milk continue to book acts as big as Lamar they’re sure to keep bringing the masses, and there were enough interesting line up additions to keep things fresh in 2025.

They’d want to fix whatever went wrong with the festival egress, however. It’s unclear whether this was a Transperth or logistical issue but leaving 10s of thousands of dehydrated punters with fatigue and sore feet unable to exit the venue and board a train was an unmitigated disaster that deserves answers. We have a Showgrounds train station, why not use it? We finally got out and made the long walk to our car at Shenton Park traino by around midnight after Lamar finished at 9:45pm. We’d count ourselves amongst the lucky ones.