Kanye West’s supposed `Glow In The Dark` tour hit Melbourne on Friday night - although as Kanye mentioned during the show this was actually a new show, and not the GITD one that had received rave reviews around the world - and it was quite the hip-hop spectacular.
Kanye’s not quite sold out show attracted a mixed crowd, but it was a crowd ready to get down and from the front row right up to the back people had their arms in the air loving every minute.I loved most minutes. The show looked amazing and the pre-‘808s and Heartbreak’ songs sounded amazing, but some parts of the show just felt weird to me, and much of the audience, although excited to be witnessing this musical extravaganza, were often wearing a smirk as if to say “Oh that Kanye.”
Still, it is his arrogance and spur of the moment remarks that make West such a unique artist.
‘Love Lockdown’ was especially guilty of this, despite an impressive visual display behind him. Later in the show, West sang about how much he loves Melbourne until someone threw a “penny” at him. His improv quickly turned to his attacker and West had 10,000 odd people screaming, “Eat shit and die” to the person who would do that.
It was when Kanye delved into his back catalogue that he really shone though. After the initial slow start with ‘Paranoid’, West launched into ‘Champion’ and set a new bar for how exciting his show can really be.
‘Diamonds From Sierra Leone’, ‘Gold Digger’ and ‘Touch The Sky’ were all explosive and filled the large stadium with a buzz that so few artists actually achieve.
Towards the end, West played his Daft Punk based ‘Stronger’ which was the absolute undisputable climax to an already (mostly) spectacular show. When the extended live version had finished the crowd went nuts and what did he do? Three more encores.
In the days following the show, I pondered what I had seen. The excitement when he was on fire, the train wreck when he wasn’t, but all in all, despite some odd on stage decisions, this show looked amazing, sounded amazing and had the added benefit of the artist truly being one of a kind.
