Glow in the Dark Tour

The first stop of Kanye West’s Glow in the Dark tour happened to happen within walking distance from my digs, so after some connection milking (i.e. unflattering begging), I was able to score tickets and witness it. Here are short recaps of the performers and performances involved:

Lupe Fiasco:
I like Lupe’s records, but he was absolutely terrible the first time I saw him. I didn’t expect much and keeping that bar low opened the door for him to impress me with a thoroughly workmanlike set. Matthew Santos was on board doing his cut rate Adam Levine impression, but if you were Matthew Santos, where else would you be?

N.E.R.D.
They sounded like Horny Rage Against The Machine. They also had more jams than I remembered.

Rihanna
I guess she’s a star, but young lady doesn’t have the stage presence to fill an arena. It didn’t help that she made some questionable wardrobe/set/choreography choices. “S.O.S.” looked like a showstopper number at Chippendales. Rihanna is either a sexy robot or a leftover from a Robert Palmer video. I can’t tell which.

Kanye West
His show had this ridiculous spaceship-crash-on-unknown-planet theme that was basically an excuse for him to drop seven figures on an admittedly awesome stage set. It’s hard to imagine another name rapper putting on a performance as solid as that, though. A personal highlight was an apocalyptic version of “Heard ‘em Say,” muscled up with a much harder beat, which sounded absolutely murderous on the massive system. My ears are still ringing an hour later. He was on stage completely alone for about 90 minutes (dude had a pit orchestra and Lupe didn’t even come out for “Touch The Sky”) and was captivating the whole time– even when the onboard lady computer of his crashed spaceship kept calling him the biggest star in the galaxy. The show was a spectacle–something I’ve really never experienced before. Absolutely worth seeing.

P.S. Not that all zero of you who read this care, but I moved to Seattle nearly a year ago and have been busy helping to launch and maintain this beast, so I apologize for neglecting this space for so long.

4 Comments »

I am not zero people. I thought Adam Levine WAS the dude singing on that Lupe track. Poor Santos guy…he sounds like an annoying dude who is richer and more popular than he is.

Comment by heidi
April 22, 2008 @ 11:17 am
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I’m not zero people either. When are you coming back for a visit? Oakland misses you. It told me so.

Comment by Alyssa
April 22, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
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Welcome to Seattle!

Comment by Erica
May 19, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
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I think that to get the business loans from creditors you ought to have a firm reason. However, once I have received a secured loan, just because I wanted to buy a building.

Comment by Laurie23Gonzales
April 7, 2010 @ 3:29 pm
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