On Friday night, while Bruce Springsteen was rocking the Scotia Bank Place, with Barbara Streisand set to take that stage the next evening, the Wiz Khalifa 2050 Tour came to the CE Centre in Ottawa.
On a weekend packed with shows, it seemed as though the parents had plans. With Wiz in town, so did the kids. That being said, age was probably not the only difference between these three shows. While the 40, 50, and 60-somethings that attended the Springsteen and Streisand concerts may have enjoyed a relatively more refined experience, the approximately 2,000 teens that were temporarily transported to the year 2050 were in a trance like state complete with a giant winged bong and more smoke and lights than a sci-fi dream sequence.
On a tour that sought to promote The Taylor Gang, Tuki Carter, Berner, Chevy Woods, and Juicy J opened the show for a headlining Wiz Khalifa, with Lola Monroe apparently unable to get across the border. While Tuki and Berner did a fine job warming the crowd up, it was definitely Chevy Woods and Juicy J who brought the heat, before Wiz burned the place down. But in a show that revolves around “getting f***ed up,” there were a couple of moments that felt like a cup of cold water in the face.
For instance, when a platoon of cops showed up and started yanking heads out of the cloud of weed smoke that sat on top of the crowd, and began detaining under aged drinkers the trip took a detour. Even though security had to be rotated in and out of the hall because most of them were catching a contact high from just standing outside of the crowd, and despite the likelihood of some parents getting a phone call about their kids the next day, for the majority of the crowd the buzz carried on and for the performers the energy didn’t wane one bit.
The crowd was so committed that between songs Chevy had to actually shout out one of the audience members for knowing all the lyrics to every song he performed. There was no question that he had the crowd tripping with him his whole set. When “The Trippy Mane” Juicy J, one half of Memphis’ legendary Three 6 Mafia, got on stage he recognized that the crowd was “turned the f*** up.” J then brought 40 females from the crowd on stage for the rest of his entire set, and basically puppet mastered their asses to his booty shaking tracks like “Bandz A Make Her Dance” “She Dancin’” and “Lucky Ass Bitch.”
But if it was J who set’em up, it was Wiz who knocked’em down. Coming out to the roar of the crowd looking like a cross between Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, and of course Jimi Hendrix, yet tatted from the neck down, the trippiest of them all never missed a beat. Wiz performed about two dozen of a variety of tracks, but none rocked the crowd more than his hits, “Young, Wild, and Free,” “No Sleep,” and the unofficial Steeler’s anthem “Black and Yellow” before closing with the single off of his latest album, “Work Hard, Play Hard.”
The 2050 Tour celebrates “the year of the trippy n****as,” and what a trip it was. With everyone from hardknocks to backpackers to plain ol’ party peeps, it was undeniable that the Ottawa crowd didn’t just keep up with the trip, but helped define the journey from beginning to end.
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