Kanye West: Glow In the Dark Tour

Posted Tuesday, April 22, 2008 @ 11:52 in Beat Reporter by Brandon Perkins

It's like that. Only in space. And awesome.

Kanye West's Glow In the Dark Tour is easily the most ambitious, anticipated and, umm, anti-social set of traveling performances in hip-hop history. Sure, he brought along his friends (Lupe, N*E*R*D, Rihanna), but as soon as their opening sets fall to the wayside, it's all Kanye and nothing but the Kanye.

It's probably futile to describe the theatrics of Mr. West's set, but let's say that a hypothetical Andrew Lloyd Webber joke before the curtain rose wasn't all that off base. There's a hydrolic platform, some moon-type surface area, a small moving screen and a very large screen behind the small moving screen. Mountains, yes mountains, are in the distance. It's meant to look desolate and it really only is Kanye...for 90 minutes. No break, no water, no costume change (until the finale), no one else (also, until the finale). Here the highlights, but let's just say, we'll be going back again tonight:

* The show gets off to a slightly unfamiliar start because of Kanye's new arrangements. Songs feel familiar, but sound like strange versions of old friends...like hanging out with the cyborg version of a good friend. Eventually, this subsides as Kanye's song choice gets more and more into his unavoidable hit factory.
* Putting aside his normal auto-tuner, Kanye's voice during his opening verse of "Get 'Em High" was transformed into a lower register mania from the depths of hell. It was evil and slightly insane and completely awesome at showing the frustrations of being crashed on a far-away planet with only your cookie cutter space ship to speak with.
* At one point, a celestial being was supposed to decend from the sky and tell Kanye how to power off the planet. It didn't work. Kanye demanded the lights be shut off so he could fix it. When the lights came back on, the stage hands forgot their cue and the recorded dialogue got all fucked up. Sometimes, Kanye's emotions seem forced...perhaps it's because the dude's vision is so singular that he has to be constantly aware of himself. When his alien banter got fucked was not one of those times. Yeezy glared demonically towards the side of the stage and I'm pretty sure someone lost their job.
* In the jaw-dropping triumpherant of "Flashing Lights," "Spaceship" and "All Falls Down," Kanye spit the same verse twice on his single from College Dropout. Perhaps perturbed over the recent stage miscue, he still managed to carry on like nothing happened. A shining moment of professionalism in the face of screwing up.
* People start leaving during "Stronger" and Kanye curses out "that LA shit" because "the show's not over." It's not as highly awkward as it sounds, but certainly amusing.

It's unfair to compare this Glow in the Dark stop to last week's Jay-Z and Mary J Blige show at the Hollywood Bowl (that I raved about). Jay's remarkable performance was about the vast superiority of his career and catalog. Last night was about a singular vision from an artist trying to expand what hip-hop means. His ambition is what artistry is about and last night, Kanye made great art.

 

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