Vancouver hip-hop fans have waited nearly ten years for another glimpse of Outkast since their appearance here in 2001 with Moby's defunct Area:One touring festival. Well, the city may have only got half of the duo at the Vogue Theatre, but Big Boi still blazed through a few Outkast classics at the start of his triumphant return to the Canadian West coast.
A medley of songs including "Player's Ball" and "Rosa Parks" saw Big Boi reciting his lines and the choruses of those now-classic singles to the delight of the crowd before he finally came around to the epic "General Patton," taken from the most excellent Sir Lucious Left Foot. "Shutterbug," "Fo Yo Sorrows" and "Shine Blockas," all tracks from the recent LP, were obvious highlights of the night, though there certainly weren't any lulls during the hour-plus set. Backed up by a hypeman, who filled in the lines of the many guest spots that litter Sir Lucious, and a giant screen playing the accompanying videos, Big Boi turned the crowd into a hand-waving mass of heaving bodies, complete with the thick cloud of smoke you would expect at a hip-hop show of this magnitude.
For Big Boi's final encore, the MC played the unofficial anthem off Sir Lucious and the song that garnered the largest response from the crowd, "Tangerine." Featuring thunderous drums, belly-shaking bass and the most memorable chorus since "Ms. Jackson," "Tangerine" had Big Boi unleashing the most tongue-twisting lyrics of the night, proving that he hasn't lost his touch, and even without Andre 3000 by his side, he could still pack the house and have them eating out if his hand.
A medley of songs including "Player's Ball" and "Rosa Parks" saw Big Boi reciting his lines and the choruses of those now-classic singles to the delight of the crowd before he finally came around to the epic "General Patton," taken from the most excellent Sir Lucious Left Foot. "Shutterbug," "Fo Yo Sorrows" and "Shine Blockas," all tracks from the recent LP, were obvious highlights of the night, though there certainly weren't any lulls during the hour-plus set. Backed up by a hypeman, who filled in the lines of the many guest spots that litter Sir Lucious, and a giant screen playing the accompanying videos, Big Boi turned the crowd into a hand-waving mass of heaving bodies, complete with the thick cloud of smoke you would expect at a hip-hop show of this magnitude.
For Big Boi's final encore, the MC played the unofficial anthem off Sir Lucious and the song that garnered the largest response from the crowd, "Tangerine." Featuring thunderous drums, belly-shaking bass and the most memorable chorus since "Ms. Jackson," "Tangerine" had Big Boi unleashing the most tongue-twisting lyrics of the night, proving that he hasn't lost his touch, and even without Andre 3000 by his side, he could still pack the house and have them eating out if his hand.
