Man, I was at the show and it was absolutely suuuuuuuper!!! Here is my little review:
Outkast
at Aquarius, Washington, D.C., USA. 09.09.2005.
>>> We rolled up around 10:30 PM, and the front of the club was totally empty because everyone had already crowded right up against the stage to listen to this young rapper '' '' who was opening for them (he actually worked on the ''The Grind'' album too). Around 11:00 PM, the trio from Outkast climbed onto the stage and kicked things off with ''Verbal Clap'' (which is hands down my favorite track from ''The Grind'' album) and then they transitioned it into ''Buddy'' using that newer version (honestly my absolute favorite song of theirs ever). This caught me totally off guard because those two tracks are my all-time favorites—and Buddy is maybe just a tiny bit higher on my list than Verbal Clap—so seeing them play those first was such a rush! After those hits, they played some older stuff and kept weaving in tracks from ''The Grind'' album; I remember them playing ''Much more'', ''The Grind'', ''No'' (where everyone was pointing their fingers during the chorus like ''No-no, no-no''), ''Come On Down'', and ''Rock'' (that performance was incredible, every time they hit that transition point, they’d stop the music, freeze for a second, and then drop the beat... sooo legendary!!!)... Then, right around midnight, they dropped ''a Roller Skating jam Named Saturday'' and the whole crowd was screaming ''Saturday, saturday, saturday, it's a saturdy-iyay-iyay...''. Sometime around then or before, they also did ''ring ring ring'' and it was just awesome. They even played ''me Myself and i'', and during the song, they cut the backing track and shouted ''Me, Myself and WHOOOO???'' and we all went wild shouting Aaaaaaaj! Then they’d ask ''Who love himself?'', ''Who loves own life?'', and we’d all go Aaaaaaaaaaj! It was such a vibe, though with how crazy loud the crowd was, I could barely hear those funky melodies in the background, at least not from where I was standing in the front row. Then they performed ''Ooh'', which surprised me because I didn't think they would do it since it usually features Redman, but the crowd went absolutely nuts for it! After that, they played ''All Good'', and everyone was yelling at the top of their lungs. They took these short breaks where they’d say, ''This is our 1st time in Washington, D.C. and this is real hip-hop right here'', and they even asked us what color our flag was or something, then told us it didn't matter which flag we flew because we were all under the hip-hop flag together.... They also played ''Thru Ya City'' (it was sooooo good) though it was hard to recognize the song because it gets so loud in there you can barely tell what's happening. Then they started talking about women in hip-hop and asked, ''Who knows who is the 1st female rapper?'', and I yelled out ''Queen Latifah'' and I was totally right! They actually called up about 25 girls to the stage to dance while they rapped ''Baby Phat'', and it was pure madness, like ''Nasty guuuuurl...''. I managed to grab a quick video (no sound, though, my camera sucks). Then they headed down from the stage with the girls, probably to sign some autographs or something, and they let ''shopping Bags'' play, so everyone thought the concert was over and started heading out, but we stayed in the front row and moved right into the center, and then the Outkast crew came back out on stage for a few more songs! They were shouting things like ''Who knows about our 1st album 3 Feet High And Rising?'' and stuff, I don't quite remember how the whole thing wrapped up, but it must have been around 12:50 AM. They played some other tracks I didn't know, or maybe I did and just couldn't make them out in the noise... I caught a few short videos (again, no sound due to my crappy camera) and snapped about 100 pictures... Around 3:00 AM, we spotted the Outkast guys by the dance floor in the indoor section of Aquarius, and we actually got to take photos with them! We wanted to chat with them, but we honestly had no idea what to ask. We didn't have any paper or pens on us, so no autographs, but hey, at least we have the pics. The only thing we actually asked was: ''Can we take a photo with you?''. They were totally down to earth and were actually vibing to whatever the DJ was spinning for the after-party; they knew every single lyric to the songs being played... I don't know what happened after that because we were dead tired and finally left Aquarius around 4:00 AM (had school in the morning so we were running on empty). It was amazing, and man, I really hope I get to experience something like that again.
>>> Alright, so I went ahead and pulled together about 20 photos for you guys and uploaded them right here:
