Jaff and Jcom at Lil Wayne's "I AM MUSIC" show in Toronto

What's up JCom-munity! It's Jaff. I'm here with my first official blog for Just Compton and I could not think of a better way to start off than by covering one of the hottest artists in the world today, the self proclaimed "best rapper alive", Weezy F. Baby...please say the baby lol. I'm talking about none other than the one and only Lil Wayne. I had the pleasure to check out Lil Wayne and company, as the "I AM MUSIC" tour rolled into Toronto for a sold out show at the Air Canada Centre. The show featured some of the biggest stars in hip-hop and R&B, as well as some on the come up. With Wayne headlining, he had a supporting cast of T-Pain, Keisha Cole, and Keri Hilson.

The show started off with Keri Hilson as she sang some of her hits including "The way I are" and "Energy". She then closed her set with a very special guest from the T-Dot (which I predicted by the way lol) as she brought out the hometown favourite and Canada's hip hop embassador, Kardinal Offishall. Kardi recieved a huge pop from the crowd as he performed his hit single "Numba 1" with Keri Hilson singing the hook. I was impressed with Keri Hilson's singing and live performance. It was clear to see that she has the talent to be one of the next big names in R&B, look out for her album coming out this spring.

Up next was Keisha Cole, who has recieved a lot of attention from her reality show "The Way it is". A show which basically documents Keisha and her crazy family. However, all on-screen antics aside, she really put on a good live show. Performing such uptempo hits as "Last Night" and "Let it go" to slow ballads such as "Sent from heaven", "I remember", and "Love". With her soulful and powerful singing voice, Keisha Cole reminded me of a young Mary J Blige, which are some pretty big shoes to fill in the world of R&B soul.

After that we were all entertained by the "Ringleader" himself T-Pain (in his traditional top hat and oakley shades lol). Now I'm not gonna lie, I was one of T-Pain's biggest skeptics. Initially I had wrote him off as just another gimmick with the whole auto-tune thing (the thing that F's up his voice). But love him or hate him, in the last few years no one has had a bigger impact on mainstream music than T-Pain (ok,with the exception of Lil Wayne). I remember when I couldn't turn on the radio without hearing a T-Pain song or one that featured him, he was everywhere! And with the release of his third album "Thr33 Rings" he let us know that he is still everywhere! At the show T-Pain performed such hits as "Buy u a drink", "Bartender" and "Chopped n Screwed". He even did some of his hooks on songs that he was featured on, such as: "Low", "One More Drink", and "The Good Life". He also had a dancer on stage with him at all times who was wicked at pop-locking and ticking, even T-pain showed off some of his dancing skills and I was impressed, the man can dance! What's even more impressive, the man can sing! I mean actually sing. As he sang "Can't Believe It" he made his way over to the piano and slowed it down a bit. It was just him playing and singing. No auto-tune, no effects. Just T-Pain and his natural God giving singing voice. It made me wonder why he bothers to use auto-tune at all because he sounds great by himself. He almost reminded me of a cross between Luther Vandross and Stevie Wonder. Needless to say, you can't make it as far as T-Pain has without having some actual talent. And for a guy who "Produces his own ish, writes his own ish, and sings his own ish" he definately made his point loud and clear. The crowd went nuts, almost on cue when he sang "I can put you in a condo, all the way up in Toronto", a line from "Can't Believe It".

It was now time for the headliner. The sellout crowd of over 14,500 at the Air Canada Centre stood on their feet chanting "Weezy!, Weezy!" in anticipation. After quite a build-up, Lil Wayne finally made his entrance and appeared on stage. The place went crazy. Playing infront of a five piece band, he started with hits from "Tha Carter lll" such as "Mr. Carter" and "Got Money", which he invited T-Pain back out on stage for. Everyone was out of their seats dancing "this-a-way, that-a-way". Wayne and T-Pain then went on to do a little comedy sketch type battle, which resulted in them joining forces and performing some new material from their upcoming joint album: T-Wayne, "He's the Rapper, He's the singer". Next Wayne went into some older stuff, doing songs like "Fireman" and "The Block is Hot" after which he departed for a quick break and outfit change. In the mean time we were entertained by members of Young Money, Lil Wayne's label. There were performances from Mack Maine, Jae Mills, and 16 year old Lil Twist. Then one more surprise guest hit the stage (again I called this one). Introduced was none other than Toronto's very own, Drizzy Drake aka Aubrey Graham aka Jimmy Brooks (The Degrassi star turned rapper) In the last year Drake has forged a partnership with Wayne, collaborating on serveral mixtape songs together. Wayne was so impressed that he's taken Drizzy under his wing and is now a part of his Young Money family. Drake came out to "I'm still Fly" then went into "Ransom". Once Wayne returned to the stage he asked Drake to stay on and give him a hand with "Mrs. Officer", he jokingly called him Jimmy Valentino as the part is normally sung by Bobby Valentino. Drake left the stage to a great hometown ovation. Lil Wayne then brought out Keri Hilson to perform her hit "turning me on". From there he went into "I'm Me", "Phone Home" and the mega smash hit "Lollipop" which resulted in him getting up close and personal with the stage floor (lol a lot of air humpin' going on). Now he began wrapping up the show with songs like "Shoot Me Down", "My Life", and the finale "A-Milli" which featured awesome pyro-technics and Lil Wayne shooting a tongue of flame out from behind a giant flame thrower lol. He then left the stage to Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" as an ode to us, his fans for our support, as he said "I wouldn't be sh*t without you!" 2008 truly was a great year for Lil Wayne, having sold a million records in one week, to being nominated for 8 Grammy's, he shows no signs of slowing down as he has even more projects slated for release in 2009 such as the previously mentioned T-Wayne album, and a completely alternative rock album in the works.

What more can I say. It was an amazing concert from start to finish. And I really enjoyed seeing some of our local artists (Kardi and Drake) get to shine on the big stage and represent not only for Toronto, but all of Canada. The supporting acts were all surprisingly really good, and it was great to finally see Lil Wayne live doing his thing. The I AM MUSIC tour made it very clear why he is considered one of the best rappers of our time.

Yours to discover...it's Jaff

*** For exclusive concert pics and more make sure to hit up Jaff on facebook - cjaffray@hotmail.com ***