Tuesday night the Majestic promised a stacked lineup of female hip-hop artists. First up was Denver-born soul hip-hop songstress Povi. Though at past performances she has glistened on the stages of Denver and her current home Oakland, Calif., unfortunately her Madison performance fell slightly short. While the crowd was hyped up on excitement for the acts to follow, no one was really familiar with Povi’s music, so audience engagement and participation was low. Even with the music itself being relatively unknown, it was nice to bop around to, and I did marvel at the beauty of Povi’s vocal strength, that is until the peak of awkward concert events occurred.
Seemingly pointlessly, Povi looked out into the audience and asked a girl to come on stage and sing to her. It was weird. It was definitely not comfortable to witness. It also made me want to forget the set as a whole.
Luckily, Lizzo swooped in to save the day with her performance that simply overflowed with confidence and beauty. Before me on stage were Lizzo, two yellow overall-clad female dancers and a female DJ. Seeing four powerful women onstage was empowering by itself, but what was even better was that all of the women were curvy, beautiful and representing a demographic of women that is not often seen in the forefront. In fact, a few months ago Lizzo specifically sent out a tweet stating that she was looking for backup dancers who were taller than 5’6” and curvy. Lizzo herself was wearing an outfit that was equally exciting as her dancers’: a black shirt and shorts covered by a see-through rain jacket; unsurprisingly, she looked totally badass and awesome.
After a few minutes of killer dance breaks, fantastic vocals and unfettered excitement from both the performers and the audience alike, Lizzo broke into her song “W.E.R.K.,” which turned up the audience’s energy by about a million percent. As she sang about thinking like a boss, I remember thinking how incredibly confident she looked, and my mind wandered to an interview I read recently. In it, an interviewer asked Lizzo when she was most confident. She responded saying she felt most confident while on stage but only if everything was going well and her wardrobe was functioning properly. Simply put, everyone at the show could tell that this was one of those nights when everything was going well and the flow of confidence was unhinged.
Next, Lizzo went into “Paris,” which was so great for two reasons. First, it showcased her vocal strength more than any song previously had. Second, it involved a lot of call-and-response with the audience, which was exciting and demanded everyone’s attention. Following this, there was a dance interlude to the Shamir song “On The Regular” and a few new Lizzo songs that showed off her vocals on a new level. She sounded incredible. She then went on to perform her hit song “Batches & Cookies” and a song about being in love with herself that exuded the most humble kind of self-love.
Finally, the peak of the entire performance was Lizzo’s speech about how everyone matters, no matter their race, gender or what they look like. She finished her monologue with the powerful statement: “My black life matters.” It seemed that the audience had chills as Lizzo followed this speech with “My Skin,” a song about how she loves her brown skin and who she is.
To say that Lizzo is a queen of the stage is limiting because she is also the queen of vocals, feminism, confidence, acceptance and being pretty darn great.
