Musiq faces the Music

Being an avid neo soul fan, I was more than ecstatic to finally see Musiq SoulChild in concert at the 02, but to be honest, I felt sorry for him because my expectations of him may have been too high!
The crowd was most definitely pleased with the opening performance from Vula giving us her upbeat neo soul vibes to prepare the audience for the eagerly anticipated performance from the Philly native himself. With his swagger announcing his arrival, one of Philadelphia's finest soul export enters the stage wearing a three-piece white formal, thrown off by a red skinny tie and opens the show with a track from his new album OnMyRadio, ironically entitled Welcome Back. OnMyRadio also features a duet with Mary J Blidge, IfULeave, which the crowd went absolutely wild for. Although, Ms Blidge didn’t surprise us with an appearance, his background singer took her voice of justice to the front of the stage and also amazed us with her solo, soulful rendition of TeachMe that overwhelmed the crowd so much by just singing those two words, she had to wait minutes before continuing her piece. I for one was absolutely dumfounded by her sultry performance and surprised she didn’t have her own concert.
As for Musiq...the audience could definitely see he likes to keep fit, evident by his disappearing acts throughout the show due to technical difficulties and his sore throat. He did try to rectify the situation by serenading the females of the audience, teasing them with fluffy gifts that even men would be ashamed to say they were fighting for!As expected, he took the audience down memory lane with HalfCrazy, WhoKnows and MaryGoRound, and brought us up to date with my personal favourite SoBeautiful. Maybe I did expect too much, but nonetheless, it was an enjoyable performance!

Maybe a more intimate venue would have been better? An acoustic band, perhaps? Am I really asking for too much!?!

© Simone Byer, 2009