Concert review<\/h2>\n
There has been much industry chatter this year (some of it misguided) about when hip-hop\u2019s next great superstar might arrive, often pointing to the genre\u2019s absence atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart relative to even five years ago.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cOctane\u201d \u2014 Toliver\u2019s first all-genre chart topper, which yielded some of the year\u2019s most heavily streamed rap songs by an artist not named Drake. Toliver, who’s<\/mark> inked to Travis Scott\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n In some ways, \u201cOctane\u201d feels like a quiet culmination for Toliver, his stardom fully realized \u2014 almost sneakily \u2014 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 \u201cOctane\u201d showcase, drawing heavily from his latest album.<\/p>\n Opening with the album\u2019s biggest song \u201cE85,\u201d Toliver tossed<\/mark> 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\u2019t hit nearly as hard when Toliver played the 2 \u00bd-minute hit a second time to close the show.)<\/p>\n In mainstream hip-hop\u2019s post-\u201dAstroworld\u201d landscape \u2014 referring to Scott\u2019s landmark 2018 album \u2014 Toliver is hardly alone in packaging an AutoTuned celestial psychedelia with bro-licious rage-rap bangers. Toliver\u2019s particularly accessible strain neither has the chaos or eccentricities of Playboi Carti\u2019s best work nor the soundscapey ambition of his label boss. But part of what separates Toliver from the somewhat homogenous crowd swimming in Scott\u2019s and Carti\u2019s wake is the tightness of his songwriting and his more lucid R&B influences.<\/p>\n Toliver eased into a stretch of after-dark R&B with \u201cCardigan\u201d and \u201cNo Idea,\u201d two of the few oldies that cracked the setlist. Two decades since T-Pain\u2019s electronically warped voice entered the pop consciousness, the use of AutoTune remains somewhat divisive, with opinions often shaped by<\/mark> one\u2019s age and genre proclivities. To his credit, Toliver\u2019s not too heavy-handed deployment \u2014 sometimes vacillating between clean and electro-washed vocals in the same song \u2014 treats the effect as more of a tool than a crutch.<\/p>\n The emotion in Toliver\u2019s love-pained vocals still cut through the digitized veneer on the heartfelt climax to \u201cCardigan,\u201d as the singer stood in front of his tree-lined Doppler radar-evoking stage backdrop while<\/mark> wearing an all-white spacesuit \u2014 a likely nod to his Space City roots. Still, there were times when he let the backing track carry too much of the songs\u2019 load, diluting their potency.<\/p>\n The transitions between Toliver\u2019s 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 \u201cTore Up\u201d from a platform hovering above the crowd, Toliver abruptly downshifted to finish the first half of his set with a cooling \u201cK9,\u201d joined by opener SahBabii.<\/p>\n After a halftime break while his DJ filled eight minutes, Toliver returned with the Death Star-imploding bass lines in his technically unreleased single \u201cToo Much Money In Here,\u201d before another run of \u201cOctane\u201d highlights including misty R&B cut \u201cTMU\u201d and a sensual \u201cTiramisu.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Before walking off with a repeat of \u201cE85,\u201d Toliver took a moment to reflect on recent successes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never been crazy about trophies, accolades, none of that (expletive),\u201d he said. \u201cI just wanted to be heard. I just wanted people to listen to my music. Now we\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n One of these days, those external accolades ought to start catching up with his ever-increasing popularity.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Concert review There has been much industry chatter this year (some of it misguided) about when hip-hop\u2019s next great superstar might arrive, often pointing to the genre\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2475662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2475661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Don-Tolivers-\u2018Octane-tour-conquers-Seattles-Climate-Pledge-Arena.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2475661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2475663,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475661\/revisions\/2475663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2475662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2475661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2475661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2475661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}