Last night's Black Eyed Peas show at the Sprint Center was a spectacle of Las Vegasean proportions. The set was equipped with a raised orchestra stand for the band and backed by LED screens flashing circuit board designs straight out of Tron.
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An emblem of metal and LED lights periodically raised and lowered, resembling something the Mayans would have created had they made it to the Industrial Age. Will.I.am flew like Peter Pan. Fergie's spiked heels looked like lethal weapons. Taboo rode a neon motorcycle that emerged from under the stage and swooped, suspended, over the crowd. It was
Back to the Future II meets
Star Wars meets
Mad Max. It was, in a word, huge.
It was about a million times more elaborate than I'd expected, especially after the opening acts -- all stars in their own right -- significantly lowered the bar. In Ludacris' case, it was through no fault of his own -- more on that in a moment.
When Internet meme-hoppers LMFAO took the stage at 7:30 to a still half-full house, I thought I'd accidentally walked into the national touring production of
Saturday Night Live.
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Sky Blue and Red Fog, LMFAO's big-haired lyricists, if you can call them that, were outfitted in every stupid trend Kanye ever made popular, from matching, white-framed '80s sunglasses (without their lenses) to all-over print tees with gold lettering, to stud-pierced and tight-yet-sagging jeans. They used a
keytar and
Auto-Tune. They addressed the crowd with limp lines like, "Where my ladies at?" And when they performed the songs we've all heard at clubs (and perhaps wondered, "Who the hell is this?" but sang along anyway), the sound system was so weak that one had to turn to the
Lisa Frank-inspired graphics on the screens behind the stage for entertainment.
Oh well. At least they knew they were in Missouri and not Kansas, as evidenced by a word-swap in their
biggest hit: "I'm in Missouri, bitch!"
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Luda took the stage dressed in all black to set off his diamond-heavy chain, accompanied by backup dancers with moves straight outta an A.T.L. strip club and his ever-loyal hype man. But it seemed like the sound mixers, playing his tracks, had no idea how to balance hip-hop's bass with a rapper's vocals. The plus side was that Luda's voice came through crystal-clear. But the recorded tracks he rapped over for hits like "Shake Your Moneymaker," which would have been immediately recognizable, sounded dim.
The wait between Luda's exit and the BEP's entrance was completely justified by the elaborate set that took shape in the interim. Over the course of the show, the performers made multiple entrances through revolving pods with sliding doors, smokescreened portals and from under the stage via elevated lifts that, at one point, launched all four of them into the air. Each went through half a dozen elaborate costume changes. Sometimes they looked like robots, sometimes like aliens, and sometimes, their squad of backup dancers looked like Shredder's Foot Clan.
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The quartet of Will.I.am, Fergie, apl.de.ap and Taboo hit the stage to "Let's Get it Started" (apparently they no longer sing the album version, "Let's Get Retarded"). Backup dancers wore boxlike appendages in order to transform, just like the toys, into speakers.
In my younger days as a hip-hop purist, I cringed when the Black Eyed Peas took on Fergie and ditched their street roots for commercial pop. But damn, that girl is good -- sometimes over-the-top good; she can belt like a rocker or sing sweet like a diva and her voice never failed. She landed two one-handed front-cartwheels, in
heels. I saw her in the flesh and am still not sure that Fergie isn't a computer-generated hologram.
There were nods to the trio's less-commercial days, too: Will.I.am freestyled for one song, incorporating the crowd's Tweets into his rhymes as they flashed on an onstage screen. He showed that he still remembers his DJ days, playing a live mix on a DJ booth that lifted off the stage on a huge, rotating arm.
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Taboo proved that he's still b-boys at heart, up-rocking (and at one point, backflipping) better than your average gymnast. Apl.de.ap also showed his b-boy chops while performing a song with a "
Calabria" beat for his Fillipino fans. And at the very end of the show, yellow, blue and red confetti exploded from cannons, showering the crowd in what seemed like a genuine thank you from the BEPs to their fans. The last song of the encore, "I Gotta Feeling," must have set a record for the most people in Kansas City yelling "Mazel Tov!" in unison.
So, despite the fact that -- no lie -- "Now Generation" was performed
literally as a commercial for Blackberry, one of the E.N.D. Tour's sponsors, I can't be too hard on 'em for selling out. How else could they have afforded to put on such a spectacular show?
Set List
LMFAO: (potentially incomplete/screwy)
Rock the Beat
I'm in Miami, Bitch
Scream My Name
I Am Not a Whore
La La La
Shots
?????
Ludacris:
Stand Up
Drop Bows
Area Codes
Yeah
Pimpin' All Over the World
I'm So Hood
Shake Your Moneymaker
What's Your Fantasy
How Low
Move Bitch
Black Eyed Peas:
Let's Get it Started
Rock That Body
Meet Me Halfway
Don't Phunk With My Heart
Imma Be
Lady Lumps
Missing You (Fergie solo)
Fergalicious
Glamorous (Fergie featuring Ludacris)
Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie solo)
Now Generation
Pump It
Where is the Love?
Encore:Boom Boom Pow
I Gotta Feeling
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