With some passionately sung hooks and a great stage presence, Wiz Khalifa stole the show in a captivating performance at this year’s College Union Board Spring Concert.
Khalifa performed many of his hits from his album “Rolling Papers,” which released to great success last year, as well as a lot of songs from his numerous mixtapes from the last few years, including “Kush and Orange Juice” and “Cabin Fever.” Concert goers were alive and energetic for Khalifa’s whole set, and at times was a sea of bobbing hands and heads, all singing along.
Among the top numbers Wiz played were “No Sleep,” “Taylor Gang,” and his radio smash hits “On My Level,” “Young, Wild and Free” and “Black and Yellow.”
“On My Level” was one of a few songs where Wiz sang parts of the song more like a rock song, which gave his set a very old school rock concert feel at times. The fact that Khalifa sings a lot of his own hooks gave him the flexibility to alter the songs and add that feel.
One of the only downsides to his set was that he didn’t sing all of the words to some of his songs — a lot of it was left to the crowd to fill in the blanks. The audience did know most of the words it seemed, but Wiz even left some of his slightly more obscure songs to the crowd to sing.
Jay Sean, who is best known for his hits “Down” and “Remember” in 2009 – the former of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 – preceded Khalifa.
Sean started off slow and had a hard time getting the crowd going at first. He played “Remember” pretty early on, which built up the excitement, but then lost it with a slew of slow songs.
In a strange move, Sean then left the stage for about 15 minutes and let his DJ spin a few songs for the crowd. Surprisingly, this tactic worked, and the crowd was much more energetic when Sean returned to the stage.
Sean then played a few more upbeat songs and added in an interesting sequence where he beatboxed Lil Wayne’s song “A Milli” — words, bass and beat included. He ended his set with “Down,” which got the crowd all ready for Khalifa.
Ceej opened the concert with a short set, which didn’t really get the crowd going until the group started using some industry beats towards the end, including Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.”
Overall the concert was a great success, with Khalifa stealing the show and holding the crowd in the palm of his hand.
