Kanye West is the future of hip-hop

The MTS Centre was packed. The audience was dressed in its best, girls with tight and revealing mini-skirts and guys with popped collars, baggy pants. As Lupe Fiasco took the stage for an intense set — already getting most of the crowd off of their feet — any person in attendance could feel that this was just the beginning of the surge.

Roadies, busy with changing the stage between sets in a matter of minutes, said that the show-set up had began at 8 a.m. and taking it apart would last until 4 a.m., unloading and reloading 14 buses and 16 trucks for possibly the biggest rap show ever to hit Winnipeg.

Just as I finished talking to U of W student Christina Perez — spiteful that two pop concerts sold out before Kanye West — the lights went low and N.E.R.D. took the stage with a immense amount of action and guitar riffs that I thought I would never hear at a major rap show. Chris Brown, another big artist in the scene, made a short and pointless appearance.

About mid-way through the set, the girl that I had talked to was pointed to by a member of the band­—roughly three minutes later she was on stage with six or so other girls. After the show ended and as the members of N.E.R.D. walked by — the lead singer, Pharrell was willing to answer a few questions about the crowd despite the fact that there were roughly 20 or so girls begging for an autograph.

Asked over the noise what he thought of the crowd, he simply said, “I loved it,” and then when asked about Winnipeg, “I fuckin’ love it” he yelled and then he was gone.

After the initial commotion of the band leaving stage N.E.R.D. drummer Eric Greene hopped over the border and stood next to me. Winnipeg provided one of the best audiences on the glow in the dark tour, Greene said. “It’s huge and the vibe was out of control, better than most crowds in the States.” He then watched the next set like a member of the audience and did not say much.

After N.E.R.D. left the stage the next set was Rihanna. Despite the fact that she is beautiful there is only one reason why this girl was famous and it’s no doubt her voice.

Twenty minutes or so had gone by when Kanye West took the stage, he was not decked out in big gangster hats like most of his fans — he was wearing a simple costume that resembled something out of a old sci-fi flick and the minute he got on stage he started to perspire. The music was intense and the bass in the MTS was so incredibly loud that in my notes it simply says that the MTS Centre was about to pop. To my surprise it held together, there were definite moments when I thought that the majority of the crowd was going to rush the stage but Kanye West remained the only person on the stage besides his automated rocket ship “Jane.”

The stage, placed in front of a massive screen, was the surface of a foreign planet. Kanye West was stranded on this planet without chance of survival. He performed huge singles like “The Good Life,” “Gold Digger” and “Stronger” among eight huge fire cannons that blew huge flames into the air constantly, a number of glowing spheres that — as they were lowered to the stage — emitted blue-haired, robotic and busty women, who flew through the air, and finally a massive screen that must have been 80 feet long and 60 feet high. The concert was a massive spectacle that cost millions of dollars to create and took hundreds of people to keep it maintained — West did not just blow the crowds away with the Glow in the Dark tour, he took rap materialism to the next level of extravagance, setting the bar for hip-hop artists to come.