SHADES OF PURPLE AS RIHANNA MAKES RETURN
Soulful songstress serves up pop perfection, pays tribute to Prince at Saddledome show
It’s hard to be in the present when the past weighs so greatly on your mind.
Even more so when the past weighs so heavily on the present.
The present, as was the case for 9,000 or so Calgarians on Thursday night at the Saddledome, was the concert by pop princess Rihanna as part of her Anti Tour.
The past? Well, for many in the room it was the news of the day that Minneapolis musical legend Prince had passed away suddenly at the age of 57.
Granted, the age of many of the audience members was likely such that their knowledge of his songs and influence may have been rudimentary at best, but his presence over pop music, rock music, and, yes, music, in general will loom large for years and artists to come.
As it did, directly, indirectly and, yeah, probably even imagined over the evening.
Right from the get-go, actually, with DJ Chase B on a hot rod deck giving a shout out to the late and great before he played a snippet to start off his brief, but upbeat, heavy on the call-andresponse warm-up set.
And, perhaps on the more subtle side of the tribute spectrum was opener Travis Scott, who took his place on the stage to a hazy purple spotlight.
Then again, perhaps that’s giving him far too much credit and actually using a word — subtle — that doesn’t seem to be part of his vocabulary and certainly isn’t part of his schtick.
In fact, the Houston rapper also had to contend with the past in the present in some way that had nothing to do with the loss of the day.
That past was his opening set in November for the recently Junofeted The Weeknd. It was a set that was marred by berating of arena security, and his insistence that the audience ignore them and their own safety in order to rush the stage to bask in his AutoTuned brilliance. How did he get past that? By doing it again, albeit a little less obnoxiously (including by wading into the crowd for a few cuts of his own), which, actually is a word that he’s presumably more than familiar with and employed for all of his time at the front of the room.
After electro-warbling through first cut A-Team, he proceeded to explain to “Calgary!” that he woke up with a “fever of a 115” and couldn’t even “feel his toes,” but was going to power through because he had a feeling it was going to be motherf’-ing special or something.
“You in the home of the Flames so tonight’s going to be smokin’,” he said, or something as similarly clichéd and desperate.
Which, again, pretty much describes his entire set and how ridiculous it was, as he, backed by DJ, churned through a barely discernible handful of songs such as Mamacita and Maria I’m Drunk.
In other words, songs that were forgotten the second he left the stage.
Which brings us to the Barbadian headliner. And her own past meeting its present.
To note that 9,000 in a crowd was a low turnout for one of music’s top artists, reigning divas, would be something of an understatement.
But it’s also understandable considering the last time she rolled through town in a spliffsmoking, stripper-ogling blur in 2013 as part of her Diamonds Tour, the now 28-year-old showed up on stage 90-minutes late — incensing the audience, the Saddledome staff, bosses the next day and everyone else except for babysitters waiting at home and watching the meter keep ticking.
On this night, she was a comparatively respectable and respectful 20 minutes late in taking the stage.
And when she did, it was in a somewhat quieter, almost contrite way — alone, dressed demurely in a white robe, on a raised stage at the soundboard at the back of the room, which was covered in a giant white drop cloth, where she sang a gorgeous, shiver-inducing version of her ballad Stay.
It was simple. It was sweet. It was lovely.
And the fewer than expected voices raised up around her, through that tune and an abbreviated version of Love the Way You Lie (Part II).
From there, she hopped a plexi-catwalk which moved her to the breathtakingly sparse mainstage, stopping for her to deliver a couple more tastes of tunes including the very Princeesque Sex With Me as she Darling Nikki-grinded away on the glassbottomed bridge above the crowd below, eventually shedding the robe for something a little more form-fitting before taking her place at the head of the room.
There, looking like a sexy not nasty present-day Apollonia, Rihanna was joined by five dancers and her somewhat excellent band — submerged in the stage before being raised to eye-level — and continued to rattle off many of her hits in an almost medleyesque evening.
Songs like Run This Town, Umbrella, Man Down, Rude Boy were bite-sized bits of pop perfection, with the singer getting in and getting out quickly, fitting in costume changes when she could, the rare crowd interaction somewhat less frequently.
It was, to take it back there, very reminiscent of some of Prince’s Dome shows, where he gave you a breakneck-paced drive-by of the hits and his abilities because he knew you wanted them, came for them, but they were merely part of the journey.
And, well, when the person mapping that and steering the wheel is someone as talented and as charismatic as that, well, you trust them with it and just enjoy the ride.
Near the end of the evening she finally acknowledged the passing, requesting the audience take out their cellphones and light them up, noting that it was “a sad day for music,” before she mentioned the influence he’d had on her, and, quite fittingly, then launching into a version of Diamonds that, if you truly felt the loss, hit you hard, made you a little bit weepy.
No, Rihanna is nowhere near the artist that we lost on this particular day. But she is a generational talent, owns a voice that has and will reverberate for decades, and has a presence that should last for many, many more years to come.
On a day when one from the past was extinguished, it’s nice to be reminded that there are still some stars shining brightly.