LUPE FIASCO & ASHER ROTH at Temple University
Posted by Ebun | Posted in | Posted on 1:12 PM
Last night, while at the studio, I was debating whether or not to attend the Homecoming concert featuring Lupe Fiasco and Asher Roth. I'm a semi-big Lupe Fiasco fan and not a fan of Asher Roth so I didn't feel the need to rush to grab a $13 ticket. In any event, I posted on my facebook status to see if any of my friends had an extra ticket. Luckily, my friend Dom had one and the night was set.
Upon arriving at the Liacouras Center where the concert was held, I was somewhat happy to find a mixed demographic in the crowd, but was upset when I realized that I'd be standing next to a loud, obnoxious, and obviously inebriated freshman for most of the night. At exactly 9:01 the opening act came on. This is a first for a Temple University concert. The concerts always start at 9pm but nev
er really start until 10 or even later (see Nas last year.) This was the first local act that opened for the headliners that I was impressed with. He goes by the name Dosage (http://www.myspace.com/therealdosage) and he is very talented. His first song immediately caught my attention and the subject m
atter was not the typical drugs, money and guns. Then it went downhill from there. One of his crew members walks on stage, grabs the mic from him and says "I'm gonna let yo
u finish, but...." Yep, everybody wants to play off the Kanye incident. Too bad they didn't get the crowd reaction they anticipated. Dosage proceeds to call the guy a jerk and you guessed it, he brings on some of his boys to start 'jerking' while he rapped to the 'you're a jerk' beat. Typical.
Then Asher Roth. I can't really say too much about the music quality because I don't really listen to Asher Roth, but the guy has energy and knows how to entertain a crowd. I was especially impressed with his drummer because I'm a drummer also. His DJ was pretty dope. His hypeman, as always, was pointless.
Now, for the man of the night: Lupe Fiasco.
Bravo. That's all I can really say about this performance. From the second he jumped on stage til the very last second he walked off, Lupe's set was all energy. I know it's his job and he is very passionate about it, but man, this guy was all over the stage. I was surprised he didn't have a Drake moment and tear his ACL. It was like a rock concert with Hip Hop music.
He opened up the set with 'The Cool' and I was very impressed since it is one of my favorite songs of his. Then the inevitable happened- my camera died. But that was good because I had more fun jumping around and rapping to every word instead of trying to capture glimpses of a wonderful moment for someone else.
My only qualm with the performance is more with his album title "L.A.S.E.R.S." than with the actual performance. At a point in the show he begins this nonsense talk about how "Love Always Shines Everytime, Remember to Smile"....uuumm, yeah ok. He goes on and on about this love shining down nonsense. I became so impatient that I yelled out, "play that s*** already" to the humor of some people around me. Thankfully, he obliged and 'Shining Down' came on. Bananas! This was the turning point in the concert. The energy level kicked up a notch and even the "sitters" in the crowd got up on their feet and bounced to the pulsating drums and weeping guitars of the 'Everybody Nose' remix.
All in all, it was a great night, I had fun as I'm sure everyone else did. Hope the pictures and video show you guys a little bit of the fun we had last night. Til next time, peace!
i really felt for Asher because the people were not really hype and they messed up his flow when he had to come back on stage after singing "I love college". I thought the L.A.S.E.R.S was really dumb too and I wanted to pull my hair out when he kept on repeating it.