I had the pleasure of going to the Kanye West/Dilated Peoples show when it stopped in Toronto on Friday night, so for those who are thinking about going when the tour reaches your town, here is a little rundown.
The show began with a local act, which got pretty ugly. He wasn’t all that bad, but the crowd didn’t know him and he really didn’t do anything to move them. What made matters worse was his hype man, who was cussing at the crowd for not feeling him. Not the best way to win us over.
Dilated then hit the stage to a good reception, the crowd was into it the whole way, particularly when they played their singles that everyone knew. It was clear most cats in there only knew the singles, but Dilated is so good live that they kept it moving. They finished with “Work The Angles” and then “Worst Comes To Worst,” which got the best reaction. Actually, Babu got the best reactions of their set when he put on a few mini clinics on the wheels. The man is incredible.
At this point the crowd was dying for Kanye and chanting his name began. John Legend (who providing plenty of vocals and keys to his album), came out and played the keyboard and began signing the hook to “Home.” Within a minute Kanye came out and the roof blew off. Dilated hit the stage soon after to do “This Way” to a huge reaction.
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Kanye’s performance was flawless, I’ve seen better stage presence and energy, but he put his set together so well and worked to crowd as well as anyone I’ve seen. Besides doing just about every song from his album, he did his verse from the “Stand Up” remix, verses over both “Encore” and “Lucifer” and played the “Get By” instrumental to send the crowd into a frenzy. He also did a little spoken word type piece over the “You Don’t Know My Name” instrumental which was absolutely hilarious. The most unexpected highlight of the night came from violinist Miri Ben-Ari. For those who don’t know, she played the violin on about half the songs on “College Dropout.” She joined Kanye on stage for “The New Workout Plan” and was just incredible. Kanye then left her and she proceeded to cover various songs, beginning with Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks” and climaxing with Jay’s “Dirt off Your Shoulders.” I can’t really describe how incredible it was to hear that and if you would have told me an audience like that would have reacted that way to a young girl on a violin, I would have laughed at you. People were losing their damn minds, easily one of the biggest reactions of the night.
Don’t miss this show…
