Showtime was billed at 8pm, but Fran and I arrived close to 8:20, not expecting anything to get going any time soon. The DJ started bringing on opening acts maybe 10-15 minutes later, and that lasted for about an hour before they were semi-abruptly pulled off stage. I described that whole scene as "amateur hour". At one point there were 5 or 6 guys standing behind the DJ laptops doing who-knows-what. And most of the acts, bar one, weren't very successful at getting the crowd hyped up.
Anyway, Davido came on a little after 9:30, and wrapped up a bit before 11:30. The crowd was pretty sparse when we arrived, but filled up around the time he started. Throughout his set he brought on a lot of guest performers, sometimes performing with them and other times leaving the stage altogether. A couple of those departures led to reappearances to perform songs within the crowd (once on the floor, once on the first level of seating).
I had the realization during the show that I was only familiar with maybe half of his discography, which is low for me going to see an artist's show (but I did walk out to one of his songs at our marriage reception, so I guess that's sufficient). A lot of the crowd seemed to know the lyrics to every one of his songs, in contrast to me never having even heard half of them. But there were at least a couple of songs he didn't play that I wish he would have (e.g., "Assurance").
Performance-wise... There was a live band for most of Davido's songs; though I think they just played recordings for the guests. The stage setup was modeled after the NYC subway, which made me wonder whether that was specifically for MSG or whether they reused that at other shows. There were also pyrotechnics at various points. And he had dancers that came out (somewhat randomly) for a lot of the songs.
Overall it was a fun show, but tough to give a high rating.
--
Rating: 3.8/5
Posts
