Although there was no outright controversy surrounding the Lupe Fiasco and Ludacris concert this past Friday night, there are still a couple things which should be looked at.
First, the fact that both artists backed out of doing interviews at the last minute was unfair, both to the students whose activity fees were paying them to come and to the campus media organizations who had planned to interview both celebrities for several weeks beforehand.
Also, the fact that it was in their contract to speak to the College's media and they simply disregarded it says this: "We are famous, you are not, your contracts mean less than our personal preferences."
Furthermore, the idea that we could only photograph both Lupe Fiasco and Ludacris during their first two songs is just that: Ludicris. They each have performed before thousands of flashbulbs exploding in their faces, but two at the College is too many.
Regardless of the artists' conduct, we do appreciate the work done on our behalf by the College Union Board (CUB) administrators, who advocated to get us interviews and photographs.
We can safely say that CUB ran a solid concert with a turnout that will make the event one which continues to be talked about on this campus.
The concert itself was fantastic and people truly got their money's worth, but the ending left somewhat of a bad taste in people's mouths.
Following his last song, "Money Maker," Ludacris said something to the effect of "I'm out" and quickly ran off stage. For more than five minutes, chants and screams for a much-expected encore came from the crowd as Ludacris' D.J. remained on stage.
There was no indication that he was not going to come back out as most performers do return when given a request such as the Rec Center crowd so clearly gave. After a few minutes, the lights came on and it was over - no encore, no big expected finale.
Ludacris took his hefty paycheck and ran. So, to that we say what he asked the crowd to say to him during his performance: "Fuck you, Luda!"
