Kanye West / Young Gunz / Paula Campbell @ UMBC Field House 4/22/04

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I'm going tomorrow and I'm mad excited. I'm gonna throw the diamond up and all that cheesy shit. I don't go to many hip hop shows, mainly because the people I'd wanna see usually are playing giant venues and charging too much, but this should be fun. I kinda wish I could've gotten into the Kanye/Twista show at the 9:30 Club instead, but this should be good too. I don't really like the Young Gunz but I'm kinda excited to see them, I hope Rell is there to sing on "No Better Love". Paula Campbell is unknown outside Baltimore but she has a couple local hits, one of which I started a thread about - Paula Campbell - "Take You Home" - and I'm hoping she has CDs for sale or something.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 22 April 2004 02:40 (twenty-one years ago)

true story: I've been to a show at UMBC once before, about 6 years ago, when Soul Coughing was playing on a bill with a bunch of hip hop acts, and Rakim was scheduled to be the headliner, but for some reason he pulled out at the last minute and the replacement headliner was Outkast. this was like 6 months before Aquemeni dropped, I didn't know much about them so I left before they played.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 22 April 2004 02:43 (twenty-one years ago)

have fun! the review i read of the detroit show said kanye was very good and talked too much. i thought all of the dates were with dilated peoples.

― ww, Thursday, 22 April 2004 03:20 (twenty-one years ago)

my brother saw him with Dilated Peoples about a month ago, I guess that leg of the tour is over now. but he raved about Kanye's set and urged me to see him. apparently he does "Last Call" live, telling stories at the end and everything, which is kind of ridiculous.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 22 April 2004 03:26 (twenty-one years ago)

kanye was very good in chicago the week the lp came out - have fun!

― scott pl. (scott pl.), Thursday, 22 April 2004 03:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I just got back! it was awesome, and I got to meet Consequence.

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 23 April 2004 03:10 (twenty-one years ago)

weirdest moment of the night, when I got there before the show started, the music playing on the PA was the Streets. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? I guess some dweeb student employee in the tech department decided to blow some minds with something 'different'.

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 23 April 2004 03:12 (twenty-one years ago)

the show was sponsered by the local rap station, 92Q, and before the show a bunch of 92Q on-air people came out onstage at the beginning of the show. it was cool to see them in person since I listen to them every day. K Swift was wearing a Winnie the Pooh shirt!

Paula Campbell's set was short, basically her 2 radio hits plus another song, and some various other fooling around. she had 8 dancers, 4 male and 4 female, and at one point they staged a weird battle of the sexes thing, respectively seeking the approval of the ladies and the men in the audience. the ladies' theme music was "Milkshake" and the mens' theme music was rugged Lil Jon tracks like "Neva Eva". Paula's album is apparently dropping on the 27th, I'm gonna look out for that.

the Young Gunz set was alright. it pretty much confirmed my preference of Neef over Chris, he's a much better performer, more energy and connects with the audience a lot. I don't have the album so I pretty much only got down to the hits, and they didn't do the one track I really like, "Parade". but they were good. I was still drinking a water bottle during their set so when I threw up the diamond it was kinda half-assed, still holding the bottle, but I was done with it by the time Kanye got onstage.

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 23 April 2004 03:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Kanye rocked, he had a better stage presence than the couple times I'd seen him perform on TV, he held it down. he did pretty much every song from the album (except "Never Let Me Down" and "Breathe In Breathe Out"), plus did stuff over beats he did for other people, like doing his own verse over "Stand Up" and he did a sleazy version of "You Don't Know My Name".

he had his whole crew, John Legend and Miri Ben-Ari and Consequence and GLC. Miri came out for "The New Workout Plan", and then they did the Lil Jon remix (!) that's coming out soon. then they let Miri do her thing for a while, just playing violin over hip hop beats, the best was when she did "We Gonna Make It". John Legend did a little of "A House Is Not A Home" solo before "Slow Jamz" and that was really cool.

my favorite part of the set was the encore when Kanye got into stuff like "Spaceship" and "Family Business", which I was surprised got a really good crowd reaction, those are some of my favorite tracks on the record, I'm glad people are feeling it. I know a lot of people here are really cynical about the whole Kanye thing, but I've been following him as a producer for a long time and I have all his mixtapes and I really like him as an MC, but I never really expected him to blow up like he has, and it was really gratifying to stand in a big arena with a bunch of people who know all the words like I do and throw the diamond up.

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 23 April 2004 03:35 (twenty-one years ago)

that sounds great. i'm really jealous. i kind of hoped i'd have that feeling after i saw 50 but i got almost the opposite feeling and was disappointed, and i live too far from any major urban centre to see anyone i'd like to see.

― ww, Friday, 23 April 2004 04:22 (twenty-one years ago)

bummer, so the 50 show wasn't very good?

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 23 April 2004 04:25 (twenty-one years ago)

i was preparing for a religious experience. it didn't change my life but it was a lot of fun. kardinal was amazing. banner didn't show up. i wrote about it here.

― ww, Friday, 23 April 2004 04:29 (twenty-one years ago)

i know what you mean about following kanye's rise and everything. you can almost hear him learning to rap. like, on the one version of all falls down he ran out of breath. i thought that was great, how he told the engineer to keep the beat running. you could root for him and now he's going platinum. he's like a backpacker da band.

― ww, Friday, 23 April 2004 04:33 (twenty-one years ago)

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