As I mentioned on Friday, I went to my alma mater’s annual spring show, Art Attack, which featured TWO artists this year, Wale and Big Sean.

In the past, I have seen B.o.B. and MGMT perform, and during my undergrad career, I opted out of seeing Weezer, Ben Folds, and Nelly. I don’t know why, but my school has a tendency to book acts that are at least a few years past real relevance, as in they have no new music currently out. Yes, Nelly had “Just a Dream” and B.o.B. actually had an album come out the day after I saw him, but the songs that they performed and that we wanted to hear from them were older songs. Having artists whose songs are currently on the radio was exciting to me.

I’m also a hip hop fan and I was extra excited that Wale was performing. He is a DC local, actually, but he rarely performs in the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia area) anymore, so this was a super treat to have him perform. I like Big Sean as well, so needless to say, I bought my ticket for the concert pretty fast.

Strangely enough to me, I find that I may need to find some new friends in life. 😛 SO many people at work didn’t even know who Wale or Big Sean were, which puzzled me because:

• Wale is actually quite big in the DC area because he is local
• Big Sean is pretty huge in the hip hop scene and frequently works with other giants like Kanye and I’m not even going to mention anyone else he did 2 Kanye songs during his set.

Anyway. I understand that people who don’t expose themselves to hip hop probably won’t know who either of these artists are.
What was more stressful for me was that none of my closest friends would go with me. (I need new friends.)

So, I scrambled to find some homies to hang at the concert with because it is really lonely to go to a hip hop concert (or any concert, for that matter) alone. I found a few people and, at the concert itself, I ended up finding a different group of people that was a) dancing and b) I stayed with because it got too hard trying to go back to my original seat.

Wale and Big Sean are very different performers. Wale still performs like local talent. At one point,  he had 5 hype-men up on stage with him. He jumped off stage and ran into the crowd to address us plebes in the bleachers. (Pretty sure security had a panic attack.) It was a very chill environment with Wale and it was a lot of fun. He knows that most of his fans are in the DMV and that we love him. We really do.

However. I took 2 issues with Wale’s set:

1. It was so rushed. Why was he given so little time to perform? He wanted to do his songs so he ended up just rapping in double-time. It was impressive but he shouldn’t have had to do that! What??? Why?!
2. He and Big Sean have ONE song together: “Slight Work”. When Wale performed it, I was sure that they were going to bring out Big Sean and then Wale would exit. But Big Sean didn’t come out.
   …. what? Why not? Why not have them… perform that song together…??? If they were going to have anyone perform it at all? Wouldn’t that have been a perfect and natural segue to Big Sean’s set?

Big Sean‘s set was, admittedly more fun. More of his songs are popular, including his big-time collaborations. He performed his verses from “Clique” and “Mercy” (!!!!). After last year’s MGMT concert, where they refused to perform their most popular song “Kids”, I was worried that Big Sean and Wale would do the same. But we heard “Lotus Flower Bomb” and “Bad”. We heard “Dance (A$$)” and he just had us ladies sing along for Nicki Minaj’s part.

Big Sean is more of what I expect of hip hop artists. Where Wale’s performance was more down-to-earth, Big Sean’s was a spectacle. He was on stage alone, silhouetted by a light show behind him. He was also weirdly inspirational, and I think that makes me like him more. He was telling us that if someone like him can come from a bad place in Detroit and make it, then all of us can make it even bigger than him. :’)

Also, instead of performing his verse from “All Me”, which I’m not sure he normally would but if he did he definitely couldn’t be saying “My new chick is on Glee and sh*t” after breaking off his engagement, he performed a really sad breakup song. I wasn’t familiar with it, but it was about the mistakes he made that led to the breakup. (Which, according to my tabloid-familiar friends, is what happened.)

I was pleasantly surprised by Big Sean’s performance, he has won me over.

I had a lot of fun and I hope I get to see these two perform again!

Would you come to a Big Sean or Wale concert with me?
Were you familiar with their music before seeing my posts about them?
Do you like these two?