Kanye West’s Futuristic “Glow in the Dark Tour” Dazzles Seattle (Video)

Posted on Apr 17, 2008 - 6:54pm by Shallow Nation in Music

Kanye West’s critically acclaimed Glow in the Dark tour kicked off in Seattle last night. Kanye West headlines the tour, which features Lupe Fiasco, Rihanna and N.E.R.D. The tour is visually exciting, as these rehearsal photographs reveal. Scroll for live video of the Seattle performance.

Kanye West Glow in the Dark Tour

The tour got a rave review from The Seattle Times which had this to say about the Glow in the Dark Tour.

Kanye West lives up to his promise to be the greatest star in the hip-hop universe with his “Glow In The Dark Tour,” which kicked off Wednesday night at the Key. He not only took the concert experience to a new level, he took it to a new planet.

It was a magnificent, thrilling, uplifting, sensory experience, unlike any other pop concert before it. West has rethought the whole idea of live performance, from the staging to the lighting to the overall message. He took the excited, involved, constantly moving young crowd on an out-of-this-world journey, to Planet Kanye and back.

West was the only inhabitant of this lonely planet, the only person on stage during his 90-minute set. A 10-member group of musicians and singers were in a pit well below him, all of them in black to make them even more obscure.

The huge, very tall set was like the uneven surface of another world. West first appeared lying on an elevated plaform, which eventually became like a spaceship, moving up, down and sideways, with smoke and flashing lights. An enormous video screen created the look and feel of space travel and otherworldly landscapes.

Using raps and songs from his entire career, he tells a story of a quest for love, knowledge and recognition. He returns to Planet Earth with the hard-won wisdom that life is a gift and every day a miracle.

He opened with “Good Morning,” the lead cut from his latest CD, “Graduation.” He blended most of his key raps — “Gold Digger,” “Jesus Walks,” “Hey Mama,” “Stronger” and, of course, “Spaceship” and “I’ll Fly Away” — into the narrative, changing some lyrics, including taking the N-word out of “Gold Digger” and adding Seattle name-checks to other raps. (More.)

Kanye West Glow in the Dark Tour

The LA Times on the Glow in the Dark Tour.

KANYE WEST has always fancied himself a hero; now he has staged his “Götterdämmerung.” The hip-hop star may or may not have been thinking about Richard Wagner’s epic Ring cycle when he decided to turn his Glow in the Dark tour into an apocalyptic space opera. The show, which premiered Wednesday at this city’s Key Arena, had more obvious reference points: Japanese anime, Will Smith in “I Am Legend” and any Imax shows about the planets that West might have seen as a kid.

But West, the chart-topper most determined to burn his likeness into the walls of pop’s Valhalla, cares deeply about what it means to be a hero. Wednesday, he didn’t take a spear to the gut the way Wagner’s Siegfried did, but he did confront terror, doubt and filial grief in a show that carried his braggadocio into the realm of myth itself.

Performing a set of favorites from throughout his repertoire, West moved like a dancer in a Gene Kelly movie on a slanted stage made to look like a distant moon. (More.)

Kanye West Glow in the Dark Tour