Photos courtesy of The Rave/Eagles Club - Photo Credit: Alexander Stafford and Katelyn Winski
Considering he’s sometimes talked about for his prolific marijuana consumption as much as his music, Wiz Khalifa certainly manages to stay productive. Since breaking through in a big way with his 2011 Atlantic Records debut Rolling Papers, he’s released two solid, if characteristically uneven, studio albums, in addition to a number of collaborations and mixtapes, scored lucrative endorsement deals (hawking smoking paraphernalia, naturally) and just generally demonstrated that he’s more than capable of keeping up with an industry where trends and fortunes change like the weather.
Put short, he’s good at playing the game, which makes it unsurprising to find him headlining a zeitgeist-chasing event like Wednesday night’s KISSmas Bash, a strange cross section of current pop music sponsored by Top 40 powerhouse and Clear Channel subsidiary KISS-FM.
Like the station’s broadcasts, most of the music here was doled out in small, easily digestible segments, with the three openers onstage for about 15 minutes each. First was pop chanteuse Eden xo, who’s set was missed by many who were busy winding their way through the Rave’s elaborate security checkpoint, which seemed focused on finding weed but still failed to prevent the entire venue from smelling like the inside of a White Owl wrapper in no time at all. Next up was Milwaukee-bred R&B singer Jacob Latimore, touting his new T-Pain-assisted single “Heartbreak Heard around the World,” followed by Meghan Trainor, whose body-positive smash hit “All About That Bass” failed to generate much of a response from the massive crowd, likely because she lacks any discernible charisma.
After an awkward introduction from some KISS DJs, Khalifa stormed the stage, greeted by the smoke of countless freshly lit blunts, and immediately livened up what had heretofore been a rather dull evening. Although that forcefulness wavered on occasion, like when he crooned his way through the excruciatingly torpid “Promises,” the setlist stuck mostly to up-tempo crowd-pleasers like the iconic, anthemic “Black and Yellow” and “We Dem Boyz,” the lead single off this year’s star-studded Blacc Hollywood, all of which benefited from having a real band there to match Khalifa’s irrepressible energy. Heads may debate the merits of his music, but you’ve got to hand it to him as a live performer. Too many MCs phone it in onstage, but Wiz, as stoned as he is, always seems determined to break a sweat.
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