Year of the Gentleman Tour

I'm tryna knock out blogs like I'm a boxer. So obviously this blog is about a month past due, but oh well. Roland, TiffanyBlue, Michelle, G and yours truly attended his show in Oakland a few weeks ago. None of us really venture out to the 'town so we drove through a hood part to get to the Paramount Theatre. Once we got there, it was pleasantly nice, since it was near Lake Merritt around their downtown area.

Anyway the show started with this group called Electric Red or something. OMG they were horrible. They were like 4 Adina Howards, except with a 1/4 of her talent. You know how JJ Fad had that 'Supersonic' song? "The S is for Super and the U is for unique...?" They had a song called 'P***y" I think, that went like "The P is for Power and..." blah blah. OMG they were horrible, both vocally and visually and content-wise. We came too early.

Grammy nominee Jazmine Sullivan performed next, and some the crowd was feeling her. To me nothing really differentiates her from the countless other Neo-Soul artists out there. Yawn.

Then came the headliner! Woo-hoo! Thanks to Share-Bare for clarifying an exclusion I initially missed on my playlist. Anyway since I'm old now, my memory may be a little fuzzy, so if I might have some in the wrong order. His lineup for the day was:

01. because of you
02. lie to me
03. nobody
04. single
05. so you can cry
06. so sick
07. mad
08. stop this world
09. do you
10. irreplaceable*
11. spotlight*
12. take a bow*
13. let me love u*
14. make it work
15. go on girl
16. sexy love
17. miss independant
18. closer

We all bet what song he was going to open with, and Roland actually won. What he won, I'm not sure haha. After a few songs in, it did seem like he was gonna sing the whole YOTG album! Yes, he even performed the latter 1/3 of the joint, of which I don't really play. He had a lil storyline to preface most of his songs, and I pretty much knew what he was gonna sing!

However the more he talked about girl problems, the more I questioned his heterosexualness. I mean I'm sure he's had GF's in the past, but so did Lance Bass. He went on to sing some songs he wrote, which I already knew [duh!]. If you're able to pen "Irreplaceable," how straight can you be?

Then he came with his hits, and his closer was obviously "Closer." Take another look at the list, and I was deeply saddened that he didn't do "Can We Chill!" Grrrrr! I mean he even made a video for it! Considering it was one of his faster paced songs, and he did "Do You" and "Make It Work" from the same album, I was certain he was gonna perform it. But no he didn't =(

But regardless, it was a dope show, like a 100x better than Musiq's. Unfortunately I couldn't boogie as much as I wanted to, since a few rows back my sisters and female cousins [and Lorilie!] were sitting directly behind me! Oh well, at least I came out of there with a free Ne-Yo poster hahaha.
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