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50 Cent & G-Unit + Lil' Jon & The BME Click, Bliss n Eso, Weapon X and Ken Hell Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Mon 20 Feb Sure, there was a hefty line-up of support acts. Yeah, one of them was a multi-platinum selling artist in his own right. His own crew were there too, but there was only one person who the crowd jammed into the Entertainment to see: 50 Cent. Unsurprisingly, the best reception for the support acts was for Lil' Jon, who had the whole call and response thing on lock (easy enough when it's only one word at a time, I guess) and managed to elicit a decent audience response with hits like Get Low and Lovers And Friends. As he concluded his set and the house lights came up, it hardly seemed coincidental that tracks from Dre's 2001 came over the PA, the promoters no doubt trying to replicate the festival like atmosphere of the Up In Smoke tour spawned by that album, but in reality the star power was too unevenly spread out for that. This was evidenced as 50 came out flanked by G-Unit cohorts Lloyd Banks and Young Buck and launched straight into What Up Gangsta?, and the crowd suddenly grew in size and volume. Young Buck was easily the most enthusiastic of this trio, and a surprisingly large number were able to sing along to his tracks like Shorty Wanna Ride, though the same couldn't be said for Olivia when she came out in the middle of the set. After explaining Tony Yayo's absence (he's on house arrest) and playing his So Seductive, 50 also performed the newly signed Mobb Deep's Outta Control and The Game's Hate It Or Love It before leaving the stage for a short rest. It was this interlude that really emphasised his importance to the enterprise, as Buck and Banks floundered without his presence and the crowd suddenly diminished once again, before he triumphantly returned just as it looked like the show was slipping away. To his credit, he didn't relegate his colleagues to simple hype man status, nor did he resort to the tired "which side is loudest" and "when I say hip, y'all say hop" tricks that most international shows now seem to use as crutches. More a pop show than hip-hop (reflected the costume changes and pyrotechnics) but given 50's status that was hardly surprising. What did surprise was that put as much effort into the Adelaide show as he had all the others on this tour.  |
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