So my friend Brian got himself a suite for the Black Eyed Peas show, but the problem is, one dude cannot fill a suite, so he invited a whole crew of people to join him, and I was one of them. Although it has been impossible to not keep up with the BEPs since Elephunk came out, I don’t buy their albums or anything, but they are fairly adept at making the hits, so I was curious, and they put on a killer show. Find the full review and sample MP3s after the jump.
First out of the gate was Ludacris and his show was exactly what I wanted from Ludacris to open a show: a nearly nonstop medley of his hits, nothing more. He introduced a few songs by informing us that he was going to take us way back, or that the true fans would remember this one, then we would hear about throwing some bows or how much oil his Cadillac spills. At any rate, everyone at the show knew every song he played and it was almost one big mashup of Ludacris hits, and it was awesome.
Next up was the Black Eyed Peas. Opening with Let’s Get It Started, the Peas definitely played every single one of their hits throughout the show, including Don’t Phunk With My Heart, My Humps, Ima Bee and really anything you know by them. They closed the main set with Where is the Love, and encored with Boom Boom Pow and of course, I Gotta Feeling.
That was all well and good, but in the middle of the show, each member of the band got some solo time, as it were, and they did their own thing for awhile. My least favorite was Fergie’s set, as she just hit three of her solo songs, of which I’m not a huge fan of anyways, but the other guys’ were pretty good, with Will.i.am’s being outstanding. The dudes are all pretty good freestyle rappers, but Will’s was far an away the most impressive. There was a screeen in the corner displaying people’s texts or tweets for a bit, and Will was freestyling and incorporating the messages scrolling across the screen, then he launched into some of the most ungodly fast freestyling I have heard this side of Blackalicious. It was unreal.
Before the Peas came back together for the end of the show, Will came out for a solo DJ set. First of all, he was dressed like a robot with laser beam eyes, which was right up my alley, but the entire segment consisted of him playing a few bars, or maybe some remixed portions, of really famous songs, whether it was Journey, Guns ‘N Roses, or other rap songs. Kind of weird, but the audience ate it up, and Will basically just hyped us all up, pretty regularly saying stuff like, “What up, Dallas! Dallas! Lemme hear y’all!” and stuff like that.
At any rate, if you are a fan of the Black Eyed Peas, you know every song they played for this show, so it would be hard to not enjoy this type of show: just the hits, no fucking around.
(BIG ups to my friend Brian for not only giving me two very bad ass tickets for free, but for letting me use his photos for this entry. I didn’t use all of his photos, because no joke – it was almost exclusively zoomed in photos of simply Fergie’s ass. I didn’t think we needed 85 shots of it, but a couple are a-ok.)
Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling – From THE E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies) (CD, Vinyl, MP3, iTunes)
Black Eyed Peas – Imma Be – From THE E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies) (CD, Vinyl, MP3, iTunes)
