I’ve secretly declared 2008 to be the year where I attend as many live shows/concerts as possible. So far I’ve been to 2 so I’m off to a great start. I’m going to chronicle my concert attendances and post reviews here. Uh-oh do I feel a new blog section starting? I think I do. I think I’ll call these reviews…Live, Honest & Unbiased. Pretty basic and simple concept: I go to a live show and give you an honest and unbiased report. Will some people hate me? Probably. But it’s important that these reviews remain honest and unbiased.
Yesterday I went to see Lupe Fiasco live at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The show had sold out. (Special thanks to Don-P, Eugene and Karena for taking me) This concert already gets kudos because it started right at 8PM.
Who is Lupe Fiasco on tour with? Optimus. Never heard of them? I hadn’t either but I’m not always up on the music scene. To me, Optimus is kinda like a Sublime/311/Hoobastank/Sugar Ray/Limp Bizkit and sorta, kinda but not really Linkin Park…there’s some rapping, there’s some singing, there’s some rock, there’s some hip-hop, there’s some reggae. Even though I was unprepared for their performance (honestly, I was thinking the show would open with some “headnod hip-hop”), they really rocked out. I liked their performance because they were real amped about it. At first the crowd was reacting in a sort of “who the f–k are they?” attitude but because Optimus was so hype everyone eventually got into it. The lead singer/rapper has a really good singing voice and he does a pretty decent reggae accent as well. (*sidebar: is ‘reggae accent’ politically correct to say?) The 2nd lead mainly did rapping and occasionally backed up the 1st lead singer. I really loved the one hype man though because he was exceptionally hype. My cronies and I assumed that his mic wasn’t turned on but it didn’t matter because he still was giving us a show with his eccentric dance moves and enthusiastic crowd participation chants. They threw out some t-shirts and CDs into the crowd. They also did a Bob Marley cover (sorry, I forgot which song it was). Overall their performance went well. I’d say they did about a 30-45 minute set.
There was an intermission and then…what the crowd had been waiting for…LUPE FIASCO. He comes on stage cool as a mofo (I assume to go along with his album concept). I’m not going to be all hypebeast and tell you what he had on but he was well dressed, as usual. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen Lupe in an ensemble that struck me as odd. Lupe performed with a live band assisted by a DJ (also forgot his name but in my defense I couldn’t hear Lupe when he introduced the DJ or the band so I can’t tell you the band’s name either). LUPE’S BAND IS BAD ASS! BELEEE DAT! I’m such a fan of that band, that drummer and that electric guitarist plays no games! Anyway, Lupe opens up the first half of the set performing most of his songs from Food & Liquor. Lupe performed in “storyteller” mode and told a brief story in between each song just in case some his fans out there didn’t get how the songs connected to each other on the album. This part of the concert was real similar to the interludes during Common’s Finding Forever tour. I had never seen Lupe live prior to last night so I really enjoyed him doing songs from the last album. I’d say he did about 85% of the songs from Food & Liquor. However, I really wish that he would have done more songs from The Cool (I’d say he did about 50% of the songs from The Cool). After the Food & Liquor set there was another intermission and a performance by Gemstone. I know he produced a lot of tracks on The Cool. What I didn’t know is that Gemstone was also a rapper AND a damn good singer. I also wasn’t expecting that but I like how Lupe kept switching it up on us so kudos to him.
After that intermission Lupe came back on stage, cooler than ever in all black. His first song during that set was “The Coolest” which he performed acapella, that was kinda dope. Let’s see, what other songs did he do…”Hi-Definition”, “Paris, Tokyo” (ALL the ladies went crazy…including myself a little), “Little Weapon”, “Gold Watch”, “Streets on Fire”, “Hip Hop Saved My Life” (no Nikki Jean was not there), “Dumb It Down” and of course “Superstar” (Matthew Santos was there). Matthew Santos, love this guy. I like to watch him perform because he is really feeling those lyrics. He turned out to be really good live and he expressed his range well. I would have loved, loved, loved to see Lupe perform “Go-Go Gadeget Flow” though.
Anyway. Definitely a dope show to check out, especially if you’ve never seen Lupe live before. Lupe Fiasco will be performing Jan. 25th at The Roxy in Atlanta.
