Kanye West is the biggest star in the universe.
I'm not saying that just because West could buy and dismantle the Free Press if he found us displeasing.
Or because he viciously excoriated an Entertainment Weekly reviewer who had the nerve to give West's space-age Glow In The Dark Tour (which rocketed into Winnipeg on Monday) a lowly B+.
We mean it: in his universe, West is second to none. And on Monday night, the hip-hop megastar took us to that dimension.
First, we got to hang out with his cool friends. Opening at the MTS Centre were Neptunes side project N.E.R.D. and fashionista singer Rihanna.
The latter arrived on stage shortly before 9 p.m. Breathtaking in a black ballgown and leather gloves, Rihanna (whose breakthrough was 2006 Soft Cell remake SOS) launched her 35-minute set with the destructively-themed pair, Breaking Dishes and Break It Off.
The 20-year-old Barbadian has the taut on-stage confidence of a young Janet Jackson -- an echo that was amplified when she donned a futuristic red patent jacket with shoulderpads you could land a Cessna on.
Just imagine a Janet that didn't really dance, but had more powerful pipes. While Rihanna left the acrobatics to her entourage (a lightsaber routine during Don't Stop The Music was especially hot), her voice dazzled on slower hits like Unfaithful.
It was an omen that this writer thought of Janet: during intermission, rumour flew that Miss Jackson (we're nasty) had just landed in Winnipeg to catch the show.
Sure enough, as West's set rocketed into orbit, Jackson and her bodyguards slipped onto the floor, unnoticed by hundreds of fans thronging the stage nearby. She took a spot behind the mixing board, bobbing her head to the beat.
She must have felt a kinship to what she saw: West's vision for Glow InThe Dark is as ambitious and gloriously oddball as many of Jackson's famous efforts.
Instead of a stage, there was a blasted-out moonscape. Underneath the crust crawled a subterranean world of drummers and bassists; above their heads, barren craters and dark LED panels.
The curtain rose to show West lying prone on the ground, with a hazy dawn projected on screens above him. Then he stood, and began to rap Good Morning.
That's how West's set began, and by the end, he'd gone clear across the universe. During Heard 'Em Say, the LED panels under his feet started spewing digital lava. Later, after agonizing over the decision to leave the planet on the raw and tortured Can't Say Nothing, the stage became a spaceship that blasted into the air -- appropriately, during the song Spaceship, from West's 2004 debut The College Dropout.
As dazzling as the set was, West did ditch the special effects once. During Hey Mama, the song tacitly dedicated to his late mother Donda, he only used a simple spotlight. He said nothing, but turned his head from the crowd and motioned for cheers in Donda's honour; a gesture that made it hard to keep a dry eye.
After this emotional high point, West continued his otherworldly journey, sitting down through a cover of Journey's Don't Stop Believin' before closing with Stronger, which featured a tripped-out Space Odyssey explosion of light patterns.
He wrapped up his encore at 11:30 with his 2006 single, Touch The Sky, and an extended jam session with his band.
"Hopefully, what you saw here tonight left you inspired, and you want to do something in the future," he said. "We should expect that the future be brighter than the past."
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