Lil Wayne Says “I Am Music,” Then Backs Up Claim on Concert Tour [Exclusive Coverage]
This election season,
Barack Obama
was anointed as the candidate who could bring our country together; starting in January of the new year, we’ll all get a chance to see if in fact he is capable of achieving the lofty goals he set during his campaign. If you don't want to wait until January 20 to see a man capable of uniting people from all different walks of life, we urge you to purchase tickets to see
Lil Wayne
’s “
I Am Music
” tour on one of its remaining 16 dates.
Thanks to our friends at
Interscope Records
, DJBooth was at the United Center in Chicago this Saturday evening, and we got an up-close and personal look at Weezy's magic power of creating unity. How magical is this unity, you ask? Well, roughly how many concerts have you attended where a 22-year-old black male and a 56-year-old white female were both hotly anticipating the same main act? Exactly.
(L)T-Pain doing a little dance, (R) Keyshia Cole on stage
After brief performances from local R&B product
, pop sensation
, and rock/rap hybrid
, as well as co-headliners
Keyshia Cole
and
T-Pain
, Wayne invited us into his world. A
-less version of “Mr. Carter” kicked off the New Orleans native’s set, followed by a T-Pain (and
) accompanied version of “
.” Additional highlights included a throwback performance of “The Block Is Hot” (off his ’99 debut of the same name), a Johnny Cash-esque, a capella version of “Prostitute,” and a near-seizure-inducing rendition of the
-produced “Phone Home.”
Earlier in the show, a scantily-clad Cole, who continuously strutted from one side of the stage to the other in an ultra sexy black negligee, cranked the evening's energy up a notch with renditions of past hits “I Changed My Mind,” “
,” and “
,” as well as her currently-rising single, “
,” (which included a tribute to the song’s featured collaborator,
).
The Oakland native’s forty-minute set was followed by Pain and his
circus, a highly-entertaining middle act featuring booty-shaking midgets, breakdancing clowns, fire-breathing contortionists, ball-balancing jugglers, and of course, the Auto-Tune King doing his thing. Pain, who recently-released his third studio album, wowed the crowd with plenty of energy, three outfit changes, and an ‘industry vs. circus’ monologue in which he took jabs at
(as the bearded lady),
(as the fat man), and
(as the midget). Unbelievably, the dreadlocked Tallahassee native performed only two songs off of
Thr33 Ringz
, opting instead to showcase his vast array of feature work.
T-Pain joins Lil Wayne on a Segway
T-Pain performs for the crowd
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