Vogue Theatre, Granville Street, downtown Vancouver. 10 p.m. on the night of February fourth. The first stop of Logic’s The Incredible True Story tour.
I arrived a bit late, skipping the first two DJs. Perhaps this is poor concert etiquette, but I was really only interested in seeing Logic. I arrived in time to see the final opening show, DJ Rhetorik’s, who would also be DJing for Logic.
Full of energy, Rhetorik impressed me and gained extra points when he didn’t do the super annoying thing that nearly all entertainers and motivational speakers alike do: yell, “Are you having a good time tonight? I can’t hear you!” over and over and over again. Unfortunately, once Logic appeared, this was a main part of the show. I stopped keeping track of the number of times he asked the crowd if we wanted to go home, to which the expected response was, “fuck you.”
After an (honestly) really cool intro — fitting his new album’s outer space theme, the light show immediately preceding his arrival onstage was a countdown to a rocket launch, followed by a Cosmos-esque film depicting various planets, nebulas, and stars — Logic opened with his classic crowd-pleasers, including “Like Whoa” and “Fade Away.” Rhetorik flawlessly combined bass, hi-hat, snare, and bass line. The bass was turned up so loudly that I could feel it in my footsteps walking back to the bus stop after the show. This is not a complaint.
Later on, Logic said he represents one thing and one thing only: peace, love, and positivity — I’ll let the fact that this was a list of three things slide, but only because Logic and his technicians all wore matching space suits to continue the theme.
Annoying motivational speaker strategies aside, there were a few cool things about the show. Firstly, the light show at the Vogue is consistently amazing, no matter who’s performing. If you haven’t gotten the chance to experience a concert at this venue, I would definitely recommend it. There was a screen onstage below the DJ platform and immediately behind Logic that depicted the music videos for each song he performed — which weren’t, by the way, always his own songs. At one point, for instance, he performed a Kid Cudi mashup.
When he performed “Young Jesus,” Logic brought the featured rapper, Big Lenbo, onstage. This isn’t something most performers do, so while I must give props to Logic for this move, the music video for this track is of the two rappers themselves, so seeing double was incredibly disorienting.
Logic would also consistently rap over recordings, and at one point did this weird spoken-word thing about how he’s a black man trapped inside of a white man’s body.
I enjoyed the show, but to be entirely honest, the best parts — the intro, lights, bass, etc. — weren’t because of Logic; they were either thanks to the technicians or DJ Rhetorik. I would pay to see Rhetorik again, but in the future I’ll probably pass on Logic.
