Show Review: The Dream and Keri Hilson

Welcome week at Temple was filled with activities, including a free concert featuring The Dream and Keri Hilson.

The Dream is a genius in pop music, producing Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Beyonce's "Single Ladies", along with many other smash hits, having written for Mariah Carey, B2K, J. Holiday, Usher, Yung Joc, Jesse McCartney, Ciara, and Mary J. Blige. His performance career has also been filled with hits, included "Shawty is a 10", "Falsetto", "I Luv Your Girl", features on LL Cool J's "Baby", Gym Class Heroes' "Cookie Jar", and his own more recent hits "Rockin That Thang", "My Love" with Mariah Carey, and "Walking on the Moon" with Kanye West. This success has led to marriages to Nivea and more recently Christina Milian, as well as a vice presidency at Island Def Jam Records. Having seen him live, I think perhaps the Dream should stay more behind-the-scenes. Though he (surprisingly) managed to replicate his famous high notes live (for the most part), his stage presence was less than mesmerizing, with little to no dancing, only brief moments of crowd interaction, and a lack of light show or backup dancers for most of the performance to distract from his onstage inactivity. It would have been more interesting if they'd simply played a collection of his music videos on a large screen. To prove my point, here's his clip for "Rockin That Thang":


Keri Hilson, on the other hand, took the stage with an actual DJ backing her up like a rapper would, hyped up the crowd frequently, and was almost constantly joined onstage by backup dancers WITH whom she performed carefully choreographed and actually interesting routines. I had to leave because my friends weren't being allowed in due to late arrival and there was no re-entry, but Keri-for me anyway-lived up to the hype of her early work singing hooks for Timbaland on "The Way I Are" and other songs, writing and singing backup on Britney Spears' Blackout album, and playing the lead role in Usher's "Love in This Club" music video. Her debut album has spawned several hits including "Energy", "Turning Me On", and "Knock You Down". Her willingness to perform some of her early non-solo material and even a cover or two set her apart even more than her entertaining performance already had. If you're into pop/r&b, Keri Hilson is an excellent performer.