Music of Sunday, 25 December 2011

Source: Ameyaw Debrah

T-Pain rocks Christmas Eve in Ghana!

The much talked about T-Pain concert in Ghana finally happened on Christmas Eve and it was worth every ounce of the hype it received. The singer/rapper’s performance on the night was one of the best I have seen in a long while; well thought through and delightful to watch!

I have witnessed several international acts perform in Ghana including others that were put together by 233connect, the organizers of the T-Pain concert, and this was their best production yet! I am not going to talk much about the other opening acts on the bill because there weren’t that many highlights from them. Nigeria’s M.I was very impressive and I particularly liked the way he mixed in some classic songs from the USA into his act. I was also amazed that the crowd sang or rapped along to most of his songs; he was also shocked by the response himself and had to clap for the ‘Ghanaian crowd’ at some stage.

The night began with DJ Mensah warming up the Dome with some delightful mixes, and the performances started off with Bra Kelvin Beats, followed by Gasmilla who wowed patrons with his Azonto dance moves. Hiplife duo, Keche also followed up on an azonto tip, while Kwaw Kesse made his entry and exit on a bicycle. Vintage Buk Bak and V.I.P delighted the crowd with massive hits from back in the days to date.

Like magic, when it was time for T-Pain, the sound on the night improved tremendously and we could clearly hear him no matter how high his instrumentations were. I later found out that this superior sound was achieved because T-pain brought in his own sound engineers to produce his section. I hope our local engineers were hanging around to take some notes. In addition to the sound, the lighting was great and the digital backdrops were just impressive and relevant to each single song he performed. Simply put, T-Pain’s performance was well produced!

T-Pain rapped, sang, danced, beat-boxed as DJ, and pulled every stunt to delight the crowd; and backed by his dancers, he was able to do just that. He performed some of his hit tunes like ‘Buy You A Drink’, ‘Bartender’, ‘5'O'clock’, ‘ All Of The Above’, ‘Get Low’ and several others! In fact, the only negative comments that I heard about T-Pain’s performance was the fact that people wanted more and the fun seemed to have ended abruptly. When he left the stage, people thought it was not over and so they sat down until it became clear that T-Pain wasn’t coming back.