Live from Las Vegas! One of the better show line ups during this packed Magic/All Star week in Las
Vegas was Lupe Fiasco, Gnarls Barkley and Kanye West, oh and Spankrock.
Here is how it went down”
The show was at the Aladdan Theatre, which is a real big place with two levels
of stadium seating…and shit was empty. Probably helped by the astronomical
ticket prices ($155). The day before the show we were told we may not get be
able to get free tickets, two hours before the show we had more than we could
get rid of. The show was being broadcast to China for Chinese New Year, so it
was a pretty big production with a lot of lights and pyro-technics and shit.
Spankrock kicked things off and were awful from what I saw, I don’t like
their stuff as it is and it didn’t translate any better live. It only got worse
though, cause Power 106 DJ Felli Fel was hosting and his stand up
routine was straight up death. Dude is good on the air, but man was he bad
here. He introduces “DJ” Girltalk, and it wasn’t pretty. I use
the term DJ very lightly as it was nothing more than two dudes standing
motionless while their laptop played music. It ranged from shitty mash ups
using various female vocals to hyphy emcees.
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After a long break and more bad material from Felli, Lupe hit the stage
and did a quick 6 song routine with I Gotcha, Sunshine, The Instrumental,
American Terrorist, Kick Push and Daydreamin. For those who haven’t
seen Lupe live, its kind of a boring show for the most part. Lupe
really gets into his own little world on stage, skipping around in circles and
whatnot, he really doesn’t connect with the audience at all and he just doesn’t
have great stage presence. On the bright side of things, he does every bit as
incredible as he does on record, there is basically no difference. Few can do
that.
After another long, excruciated break full of Felli Fel and Girltalk,
Gnarls hit the stage and performed a nice but short set (maybe 25 minutes). For
those who haven’t seen him, Cee-Lo has got some serious star power and really
projects it on stage. The man is a rock star. Its kinda surreal to see it
though, if someone woulda told me this is what Cee Lo would become the
first time I saw the Cell Therapy video, I wouldn’t have believed them.
Now that is evolution.
This time the break was even longer, I couldn’t even stick around to see how
bad it was and hit the lobby for a bit. The orchestra was out in full effect
and Ye kicked it off with Diamonds From Sierra Lione to a crazy
reaction. Lupe and Gnarls may have been much bigger this year,
but Kanye was easily the star of the night, the place filled up right
before his set. The highlight of the night was Kanye asking why they
crowd wasn’t singing “the song.” He was referring to the Dixie
Chicks Grammy winning song of the year, and being very sarcastic. He raved
that no one has heard the song and Gnarls‘ Crazy was easily the
biggest song of the year. He said he was sitting beside Cee-Lo was at
the show and told him he’d bum rush the stage on his behalf. He concluded by
pointing out the Grammys are bullshit and he doesn’t care if he ever wins
another one and a final “fuck the Grammys.” The crowd loved it and
went wild. The rest of his set was great and easily the highlight of the night,
he pulled out the usual stops (Through The Wire, Spaceship, Get’em High,
Gold Digger, Jesus Walks, Heard’em Say, etc). Very good stuff from Mr. West
and his crew.
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Tomorrow night, Roots show with open bar! Hells yes.
