The Florida Times-Union: R. Kelly's Jacksonville show jam-packed with hits
Anyone who was at R. Kelly’s Friday night concert at Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena really can’t complain that he didn’t play their favorite song.
Posted: April 26, 2014 - 12:19am
Anyone who was at R. Kelly’s Friday night concert at Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena really can’t complain that he didn’t play their favorite song.
Kelly played at least 40 tunes in his 95-minute set. Many of them
were 15- to 30-second snippets that he’d start, then jump to something
else, but he did play pretty much everything the crowd wanted to hear,
even if he only played a little bit of it.
It was the perfect show for the music lover with a short attention span. About 40 minutes into his set, he was already on his 20th song.
Kelly’s stage had a staircase, a stripper pole, five dancers, a working bar and a dozen ladies – presumably plucked from the audience – who sipped mix drinks and watched the show. What Kelly’s stage did not have, other than a DJ, was any musicians. All of the music, including the background vocals, just sort of magically appeared out of nowhere.
Kelly is a fine entertainer and a much better singer than you might expect. He proved that during a four or five-song run near the end of his show when he went out into the crowd and did some of his biggest hits with no musical accompaniment whatsoever, other than the crowd singing along.
The crowd was largely made up of women, many of them dressed to impress (it had to have been the greatest collection of high-heeled shoes in Jacksonville music history). And the women didn’t seem to mind Kelly’s lyrics, which run the whole gamut from lurid to smutty to downright crude. Correct that -- “didn’t seem to mind” isn’t strong enough; the ladies LOVED every bit of Kelly’s lurid, smutty and crude lyrics. It was billed as the Black Panties Tour, which should have been a clue that it wasn’t going to be G-rated.
The one disappointing aspect of the crowd was its size. The arena’s upper deck was completely empty and the lower bowl was far from filled. The show was just announced a few weeks ago, so there wasn’t a lot of time to sell tickets, but it would have been a lot better if it had been played in a smaller venue, such as the Times-Union Center, which would have been filled to the rafters.
It was the perfect show for the music lover with a short attention span. About 40 minutes into his set, he was already on his 20th song.
Kelly’s stage had a staircase, a stripper pole, five dancers, a working bar and a dozen ladies – presumably plucked from the audience – who sipped mix drinks and watched the show. What Kelly’s stage did not have, other than a DJ, was any musicians. All of the music, including the background vocals, just sort of magically appeared out of nowhere.
Kelly is a fine entertainer and a much better singer than you might expect. He proved that during a four or five-song run near the end of his show when he went out into the crowd and did some of his biggest hits with no musical accompaniment whatsoever, other than the crowd singing along.
The crowd was largely made up of women, many of them dressed to impress (it had to have been the greatest collection of high-heeled shoes in Jacksonville music history). And the women didn’t seem to mind Kelly’s lyrics, which run the whole gamut from lurid to smutty to downright crude. Correct that -- “didn’t seem to mind” isn’t strong enough; the ladies LOVED every bit of Kelly’s lurid, smutty and crude lyrics. It was billed as the Black Panties Tour, which should have been a clue that it wasn’t going to be G-rated.
The one disappointing aspect of the crowd was its size. The arena’s upper deck was completely empty and the lower bowl was far from filled. The show was just announced a few weeks ago, so there wasn’t a lot of time to sell tickets, but it would have been a lot better if it had been played in a smaller venue, such as the Times-Union Center, which would have been filled to the rafters.
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