Katy Perry
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KATY PERRY
with Wyclef Jean
May 7th 2009, The Fillmore, Miami Beach, FL
Review and photos by Kevin Allen
How does one get into an exclusive show featuring the soulful Wyclef Jean and the beautiful Katy Perry? You either have connections with important people or happened to have swung by your local T-Mobile store and picked up free tickets. No matter how you got in, this stop on the Grammy Celebration Tour was not to be missed.
The tour, which was created to showcase an array of Grammy-winning and nominated artists, was sponsored by T-Mobile’s Sidekick. Fans could be upgraded to VIP status — as long as they had a sidekick. As I walked inside The Fillmore, I saw that the "VIP" section was a square shaped area, nowhere near the stage.
Once inside, the audience seemed uneasy for the show to begin: Wyclef was more than an hour and a half late, and the DJ wasn’t doing much to keep everyone entertained (besides beat-boxing on the mic). Finally, Wyclef arrived, and once he started his set with an old favorite "Ready or Not" — a song he made while a member of The Fugees — no one even remembered he was late. He then performed his own version of Lil Wayne’s "A Milli," which came out of nowhere, but it flowed into "Hips Don’t Lie" and "President."
We all knew what song was coming next: "I Kissed A Girl." But what we didn’t see coming was Katy choosing a random girl from the crowd and giving her a peck on the lips.
Wyclef Jean in crowd
His music was so overwhelmingly captivating that once it grabbed your attention, it wouldn’t let go, making you feel as if you were the only person in the audience. In between songs, Wyclef left the stage to do a lap through the audience to the bar where he got a shot of Patrón, and back to the stage where he decided to take off his shirt and play the drums. The man is wild in a good way: He can put on a show, and not only that, he can turn a concert into a party.
Katy Perry
Wyclef soon left the stage to take a well-deserved break, and now Katy was only half an hour away. In a silver-glittery type dress/hoodie, Ms. Perry walked up to her sparkling mic and began a 40-minute set of upbeat yet provocative and bitchy songs about her life adventures. Katy wasn’t as entertaining as Wyclef. She sang "Fingerprints," "Hot n Cold," and "Ur So Gay," which she preempted by saying, "I’d like to dedicate this next song to a very dear ex-boyfriend of mine." Perry pulled out an inflatable tube of her signature cherry chapstick; the crowd roared with excitement. We all knew what song was coming next: "I Kissed A Girl." But what we didn’t see coming was Katy choosing a random girl from the crowd and giving her a peck on the lips.
I must say the Wyclef/Katy combination worked out well, despite their enormous differences in style, genre and overall feel as artists. Wyclef uses metaphors to express emotion in his music, while Katy just says what she feels in a melodic and rhyming fashion. If either of them should come back to Miami, I’ll be sure to be there.
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Wyclef Jean
Katy Perry
Katy Perry
Wyclef Jean
Katy Perry