Fuck all you haters I am a Kanye West fan,
yes his rhymes all sound similar, yes he is
commercial, but fuck it he is a production genius.
So it was with a massive deal of anticipation
I caught his Touch The Sky tour, I entered the
Thebby to an interesting mix of hip-hop heads
and Nova FM Gold Digger fans in their overpriced
tour tees. The room actually looked not a lot
different from when I caught Lano & Woodley
three weeks before at the Fringe Festival, which
was a little let down, however it was rammed
very early in the piece.
First up the support acts, newcomer Chanel
hit the stage with a gigantic voice, girl has
mad singing talent but the breakers doing dance
routines was a little cheesy for me, her DJ
had skill although with some nice cuts through
the choruses. Three tracks from her brought
a short interlude followed by Daniel Merriwether
and DJ arriving on stage, now dude has mad vocal
talent, he should be making waves in our pop
music scene but more and more lately he is coming
across as arrogant. Perhaps this was what showed
when after two up-tempo tracks he decided to
drop in a ballad admitting “the fellas
aint gonna like it” why alienate half
your audience with some of your set left. Overall
he sang well, but really the crowd were quite
disinterested and it showed a little his overall
mood as a performer seeming flat.
After Merriwether had exited stage left the
crowd mulled progressively becoming more impatient
until behind large curtains we could see lights
being tested, then after what seemed like an
eternity a beat kicked the lights switched on
and Kanye burst onto the stage performing Diamonds
from Sierra Leone. The crowd went nuts, rocks
were thrown up left right and center as Kanye
showed no signs of his busted ankle, he is a
straight up entertainer and the crowd lapped
it up. For the next two hours plus Kanye put
on the best hip-hop concert I have seen, that
includes artists I think are ten times his superior.
All the big hits were there, Through The Wire,
Gold Digger, Spaceship, Crack Music, Drive Slow,
Dear Mama ever the much derided Roses. When
there was a brief interlude between tracks while
Kanye ducked for a wardrobe change A-Trak rocked
the decks, from old skool 70’s funk to
a medley of tracks Kanye had produced with all
the trickery you expect of a five time DMC champ.
In the spoken word sectors Kanye explained a
little on his cockiness, urged the crowd to
support local artists and made jokes as his
ankle obviously began to slow him down as the
show wore on. Another massive highlight for
mine was the orchestral string section, it was
brilliant tracks like Workout Plan and Jesus
Walks from album number one and the whole second
album were really brought to life and sounded
probably superior to there recorded form. When
the violinist was given freedom to jam she responded
with a version of Bitter Sweet Symphony that
had 2000 fans singing right along with her.
After two hours and an encore that featured
Jesus Walks and Touch The Sky after the crowd
nearly brought the roof down in a literal manner
with their feet stomping, Kanye proclaimed Adelaide
the highlight of his tour so far and vanished
into the night. Kanye West is not an artist,
he is an entertainer.
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