Let’s count all the people Drake called out on Friday night at the Carrier Dome.

There was a shout-out to his doctor, who told him not to perform due to medical reasons. He performed anyway. The doctor had told him it might not be a good idea to sing at Block Party, Drake said to audience. Drake responded, ‘You must not understand, I got my mother f***ing family waiting at Syracuse.’

One.

There was the fan that made a cardboard cut-out in the shape of Drake’s head, similar to the Jim Boeheim heads used at Syracuse University men’s basketball games. ‘What the f*** is this? Give me that sh**,’ Drake said. ‘I look f***in’ retarded. If you were in grade three, you would get an A-plus.’

Two.

There was the girl he brought up on stage. ‘You might get touched on, kissed on, sucked on, licked on,’ he said. After the whole crowd booed the girl for living in Buffalo, Drake started to dance with her. He kissed her neck, turned her around and kissed both her cheeks, and then went in for one on the lips — that is, until he turned away at the last moment, drawing substantial laughter from the audience.

Three.

There was the Carrier Dome staffer who supposedly warned Drake about the curfew through his earpiece. ‘This is far from over,’ Drake said before beginning his song ‘Over.’

Four.

There were the fans he called out toward the end of the show. ‘Who’s coming home with me tonight?’ he said as he started pointing to different females in the crowd. ‘You — your friend got nice hair, is it hers?’ Then he pointed to another girl who was at the concert with her boyfriend: ‘Oh, you’re going home with him? I ain’t gonna f*** with him.’ He quickly pointed to the next girl: ‘And you, with your titties poppin’ out.’ The girl adjusted her shirt. ‘No, don’t pull it up. I like the view,’ Drake replied.

Five, six, seven.

Finally, there was the entire New York Police Department. ‘F*** the NYPD,’ he said in response to the recent controversy surrounding his ‘big brother’ Lil Wayne, who is serving a one-year prison sentence at the Rikers Island Prison Complex in New York City after pleading guilty to weapons charges.

Eight.

It was easy to lose count. But despite these interactions, the strength of the overall Block Party lineup shined through.

Block Party 2010, with Drake as headliner along with N*E*R*D., k-os, and Francis and The Lights, was the first-ever sold-out show in the series’ history, selling a record-breaking 9,584 tickets overall, with 4,500 purchased in the exclusive first-week presale.

Francis and The Lights, an electro-funk band from New York City that has opened up for MGMT, went on at 7 p.m. They highlighted their stage time with their patented Kings-of-Leon-meets-Prince sound and played a 15-minute set with plenty of hip shaking and keyboard licks.

‘They were pretty good,’ said Jeremy Wattles, a 27-year-old at the show with students from Clinton High School. ‘I didn’t expect all that dancing.’

‘What’s up, Syracuse? You live or what?’ said k-os, the second performer of the night. The Vancouver, Canada-based rapper was dressed in a blue denim jacket, gray beanie and aviators. After running through a few songs he threw a bunch of CDs, which prompted some intermittent tussles in the crowd.

He broke into the next song with riffs from Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ — a move that would be continued throughout his roughly 45-minute set — with other samples from Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ (making most of the crowd sing along) and the guitar introduction from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven.’

‘All the ugly people be quiet,’ k-os said about halfway through. One of his strong suits was his playful relationship with the audience, which also took the form of fun back-and-forths like ‘Rock a microphone like this? Like that? Like this? Like that?’ and his asking the crowd, ‘What’s my name, you remember? k-os! Where am I from? Canada!’ He also used popular rap interludes such as Busta Rhymes’ ‘Jump Jump’ and Naughty by Nature’s ‘O.P.P.’ to keep the up energy between songs.

During one freestyle, k-os sang, ‘After this we go to Chuck’s and get drunk’ to big roars from the crowd. Near the end of the set, k-os brought out Saukrates — a fellow dreadlocked Canadian rapper — to perform a Syracuse-ified cover of Phantom Planet’s ‘California’ (also known as the theme song for the former Fox show ‘The O.C.’). Before closing his routine, k-os walked out to the very front of the stage and addressed the audience: ‘Say — I am somebody.’

‘I liked him,’ said both Patrick O’Donnell and Ben Seketa, two seniors from West Genesee High School, even though they didn’t know k-os before coming. But the two said they were most excited for Drake.

N*E*R*D had the best set of the night, which raised some questions as to why it wasn’t the headliners. The group’s been around longer and has generally been more successful than Drake. One of the reasons why Drake stayed in the headlining slot may have been that N*E*R*D was the last band to get signed for Block Party 2010, after University Union was allowed one more act than the standard three for college concerts.

N*E*R*D played its future first single from the upcoming ‘Nothing’ before continuing with a sample from Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre.’ Following k-os’ taunt, Pharrell Williams looked over the audience: ‘All the stupid girls be quiet.’ The band made sure to play its most famous songs — ‘She Wants to Move’ and ‘Rockstar’ — before Williams came out to the audience, slapping hands with the fans in the front rows. He had something in his hand as he came back up to the stage — an SU shirt — that he held up over the crowd while the group signed the Vulcan hand gesture from ‘Star Trek.’

‘They were sick,’ said Molly Hope, a senior marketing and supply chain management major. ‘At the end they really wrapped it up. It was just an awesome ending.’

Other students wanted more.

‘I didn’t really know them,’ said Samantha Wallach, a sophomore sociology major. ‘I hope Drake is better, to be honest.’

Some people in the audience were nervous for Drake’s performance because he was forced to cancel a show just two days before, after a doctor told him to give his voice a rest. Surrounded by a backing band made up of a drummer, DJ, bassist and keyboardist, Drake emerged at 10:30 p.m., grasping a white microphone.

He opened with the radio hit ‘Forever,’ which features Lil Wayne in the studio version. From the start it became obvious that Drake’s stage presence was not nearly as compelling as Williams’ or even k-os’. Most of his routine felt contrived, practiced and superficial. He continued with ‘Unstoppable’ — another Top 40 jam that manages to include lyrics about the 1990s show ‘Boy Meets World’ (‘Ain’t on the fence about it, I ain’t Mr. Feeney’).

The pace of the set began to slow with the I-wish-I-had-acid-handy ‘Houstatlantavegas,’ which was too start-and-stop to maintain momentum throughout. He did, however, play new songs from his forthcoming debut LP, ‘Thank Me Later.’

Some members of the audience were reminded of Drake’s days in ‘Degrassi: The Next Generation’ when the big screens on either side of the stage caught a glimpse of two female students holding an ‘I <3 U Jimmy Brooks’ sign.

The energy started to pick up again when Drake brought out Birdman (a.k.a. Baby), the founder of Cash Money Records and one-half of the Big Tymers, for a song that saw Drake’s voice heavily AutoTuned in certain sections.

But Drake had one more person to call out that night — Lil Wayne. He said he wanted to do something for him, so he had the audience recite Wayne’s part in ‘I’m Goin’ In.’ The recording would play on Hot 97 the next day in honor of ‘Weezy.’ He then tore into ‘Bed Rock,’ a Young Money song featuring both Lil Wayne and Drake in the original recording.

Nine.

Later, Drake stopped mid-song for a ‘hold it, let me tie my shoe’ gag before starting again. He went off to the back to grab his microphone stand, which had at least 10 bras hanging from it, before breaking into one of his slower, more emotional numbers. He couldn’t get away from the women, though. Overall, he spent approximately 10 minutes talking about girls in the audience, which prompted a corny lead into the next song: ‘Will she be good for me? Will she be bad for me? Or will she be the best I ever had?’

Before walking off stage, Drake addressed the audience one last time: ‘I love you. I’m nothing without you. Free Weezy.’

‘It was good. It was surprising because I’ve never really listened to him before, but it was fun,’ said Emily Fasel, a sophomore supply chain management major. ‘His crowd interaction was really good. He interacted with the crowd a lot better than a lot of artists who perform at venues this large.’

wfmcmill@syr.edu
 

Published on May 2, 2010 at 12:00 pm