Concert Review: Jamie Foxx is Unpredictable

Last week I went to the Jamie Foxx concert and his show was truly "unpredictable". The show started off with comedian Speedy's stand-up routine. It took a little while for him to get warmed up, but you couldn’t help but laugh when he started talking about people in the audience who were trying to find their seats. And he just kept on talking about this one guy and his too small (aka smedium – no that’s not a typo) shirt.

After that, Jamie came out and did a good 30 or 40 minutes of stand up saying “I’m an Oscar winner but I’m ghetto.” It was pretty funny. One joke he told I was laughing so hard there were tears coming out of my eyes! Good stuff. There was only one thing that started getting a little annoying. He periodically would have the DJ play Jim Jones’ “We Fly High” to get a little crowd participation. Don’t get me wrong. This was tight because that song is a hot club track. It just got a little old after the 50th time he did it.

Then Jaime did a quick wardrobe change before he started singing. He sounds really good live which, as I’ve said before, everyone cannot pull off. This concert was truly like nothing I’ve been to before since he is a singer and a comedian. It was funny because he would sing something that sounds incredible but he’d crack jokes at the same time. For example, the band was doing a little break down and Jamie starts free styling and singing about how he met this girl at Pappadeaux’s who was eating shrimp. His voice sounded great but you couldn’t help but laugh at the comedy.

So, he did a few songs off the album. The only thing that bothered me was the back up dancers. For part of the set they looked like straight up strippers (with poles and all). But, I guess Jaime had to do something for the fellas since the rest of the show was for the ladies. Then he did his Ray Charles bit with wardrobe, grand piano and all. The resemblance to the real genius is amazing, but I guess that’s why he won the Oscar!

He performed almost his entire album but I definitely had my two favorite songs of the night. Now, my favorite song on the album hands down is “Do What it Do”. He also did a slow and very mellow version of “Storm (Forecast)”. This rendition was so beautiful it was way better than the album recording! As expected, he did his biggest hit to date, “Unpredictable”, to close out the show. But I don’t want to talk about the performance of the song. I want to talk about the audience.

Read carefully because this is an important lesson for all concert goers: DO NOT LEAVE UNTIL THEY PERFORM THEIR BIGGEST HIT! Performers always act like their show is over, leave the stage and then come back to sing that one song everyone is waiting to hear. Now granted, some people leave because they are trying to avoid that post-concert gridlock in the parking lot. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to a concert when this has happened and people are scrambling to get back to their seats when they realize the concert isn’t over.

Overall I was very impressed with how the show flowed. There were only brief breaks for Jaime to make his wardrobe changes. I've talked to a few people that said that he wasn't all that when he performed at Essence Festival last year. And some of those people who went also attended last week's concert and said it was way better. So, for those of you who decided not to go this year based on Essence, you missed out! It was great to have this Texas boy back home!