It's seven o'clock, on the dot, I'm in my drop top cruisin' the streets....The words of a true poetic genius, right? Okay, that might be somewhat of an exaggeration. Scratch that, it is quite the overstatement.
Usher is in the midst of his 2010 North American "OMG! Tour" and made his way to Houston this week. With my good friend in tow, I weaved through the typical downtown traffic on my way to Toyota Center with no real expectations for the show. Honestly, I just wanted to drink. I'm not an avid fan of arena/stadium concerts. I don't want to pay $100.oo for an artist I kinda/sorta want to see, but even more, I cringe when I have to spend $9.00 for a beer. I can get almost four Four Lokos for that price (that's 16 Lokos total). Anyways, Usher's latest album, Raymond vs Raymond, has been blowing up radio stations across the country. Singles such as "DJ Got Us Falling In Love Again", "Hot Toddie", "There Goes My Baby", etc. have become the new music plague. After being beat in the head by these songs, I couldn't help but start to find them entertaining. You can judge all you want, but his songs are catchy as hell. C'mon, its U-S, H-E-R, R-A-Y-M, O-N-D.
As soon as we nestled into our fifth row seats, the house lights faded to black. We missed the opener, Trey Songz. The show itself was very atypical for a pop arena show: pyrotechnics, massive projection screens, random props, backup dancers, risers, and a live band. My preconception for the performance was that he was going to lipsync almost the entire time, but to my surprise, that wasn't the case. He physically sang for a decent amount of time. That took place in between the several instances where he either ripped his shirt off, thrusted his crotch into the air, or simulated vaginal/oral penetration.
His set lasted about an hour and a half and was filled with many new songs but also a good amount of oldies. Nonetheless, I sang 95% of the lyrics and nearly lost my voice. I can't lie to you; I felt a tad ashamed telling friends that my voice was raspy for THAT reason, but then again, I really wasn't. I'm known to be quite shameless.
Biggest complaint: They stopped serving alcohol an hour before the end of the show. That was dumb. Really dumb.
All-in-all, the concert was high in entertainment value, but quantity definitely beat out quality.
For more pictures like the one featured, check out this link right hurr.
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