Concert review
There has been much industry chatter this year (some of it misguided) about when hip-hop’s next great superstar might arrive, often pointing to the genre’s absence atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart relative to even five years ago.
Don Toliver, with all due respect, is probably not that guy. However, the steadily rising Houston dual threat has separated himself from a mushy, melodic rap pack with his fifth studio album “Octane” — Toliver’s first all-genre chart topper, which yielded some of the year’s most heavily streamed rap songs by an artist not named Drake. Toliver, who’s inked to Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack imprint, rode the momentum from his night-cruising No. 1 album into his first Seattle arena date, easily selling out Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday.
In some ways, “Octane” feels like a quiet culmination for Toliver, his stardom fully realized — almost sneakily — without a ton of chatter or recognition outside of rap circles, partially due to his incremental ascent. The 32-year-old rapper and singer built his 90-minute set as an “Octane” showcase, drawing heavily from his latest album.
Opening with the album’s biggest song “E85,” Toliver tossed the unlikely rage-rap igniter like a Molotov cocktail into an arms warehouse, as the sea of young fans on the floor eagerly awaited any bass-boosted reason to go berserk. The trippy, rap-crooning number was one of several cerebral songs that took a mosh-pit-sparking energy on Wednesday between the perpetually erupting flame cannons on stage, the organ-scrambling bass levels and the highly combustible crowd. (Though it didn’t hit nearly as hard when Toliver played the 2 ½-minute hit a second time to close the show.)
In mainstream hip-hop’s post-”Astroworld” landscape — referring to Scott’s landmark 2018 album — Toliver is hardly alone in packaging an AutoTuned celestial psychedelia with bro-licious rage-rap bangers. Toliver’s particularly accessible strain neither has the chaos or eccentricities of Playboi Carti’s best work nor the soundscapey ambition of his label boss. But part of what separates Toliver from the somewhat homogenous crowd swimming in Scott’s and Carti’s wake is the tightness of his songwriting and his more lucid R&B influences.
Toliver eased into a stretch of after-dark R&B with “Cardigan” and “No Idea,” two of the few oldies that cracked the setlist. Two decades since T-Pain’s electronically warped voice entered the pop consciousness, the use of AutoTune remains somewhat divisive, with opinions often shaped by one’s age and genre proclivities. To his credit, Toliver’s not too heavy-handed deployment — sometimes vacillating between clean and electro-washed vocals in the same song — treats the effect as more of a tool than a crutch.
The emotion in Toliver’s love-pained vocals still cut through the digitized veneer on the heartfelt climax to “Cardigan,” as the singer stood in front of his tree-lined Doppler radar-evoking stage backdrop while wearing an all-white spacesuit — a likely nod to his Space City roots. Still, there were times when he let the backing track carry too much of the songs’ load, diluting their potency.
The transitions between Toliver’s trap-banger and R&B modes often worked better than expected, softened at times by a fluid sonic palette. After delivering the fiery, guitar-spiked rage-rap monster “Tore Up” from a platform hovering above the crowd, Toliver abruptly downshifted to finish the first half of his set with a cooling “K9,” joined by opener SahBabii.
After a halftime break while his DJ filled eight minutes, Toliver returned with the Death Star-imploding bass lines in his technically unreleased single “Too Much Money In Here,” before another run of “Octane” highlights including misty R&B cut “TMU” and a sensual “Tiramisu.”
Before walking off with a repeat of “E85,” Toliver took a moment to reflect on recent successes.
“I’ve never been crazy about trophies, accolades, none of that (expletive),” he said. “I just wanted to be heard. I just wanted people to listen to my music. Now we’re here.”
One of these days, those external accolades ought to start catching up with his ever-increasing popularity.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com ’
