Chris Brown Waved at Me

Last night I took my son to his first live concert at Madison Square Garden. Below is my day late version of live blogging the event. I wanted though to preface that with some remarks about the serious impact of what I saw. And what I saw where city kids, kids from the city, disproportionately black and latino—and never are they over represented that way. But they were, they owned MSG and the overwhelming number of white girls from the other islands and NJ did not matter: this was not a Justin Timberlake concert. The children aged 3 to whatever were full of joy and movement and dance and themselves. And this was their party, the highlight of their year or month or maybe 7 year old life. And they were in a cultural festival, they partook in an exchange, you know with each other and their heritage. There I said it. The codes were out—the clothes, the dances, the songs. Yes other people know it because it is a worldwide phenomenon but you would be remiss if you were there last night and did not understand that these city kids were letting you know THIS IS THEIR FUCKING SHIT you loving and dancing to; comes from them and is in the world, for them. They were beautiful.

Chris Brown Waved At Me

On the 1 train uptown almost midnight. Our feet and legs hurt. In my
case my shoulders hurt because for two songs he was sitting on them. I
look over, he is still elated and mesmerized. I say,
"So I'm guessing this is up there in your top five best days of your
life, huh?
He replies immediately,
"It's number one."

And so my son wrapped up his first ever live concert. Probably one of the
funnest concentration of urban youth ages 5 through 35 I have ever seen.
Man, these children want to/can/love to/live to DANCE. I mean they were
dancing from 6:30 to 11:30 PM. We got there at 7:30 found them dancing
already. Babies to teenagers, seriously: moves for days, all in unison
with whatever the dj was playing--to each song, a dance. And singing
every word. My son got right into it.

First we saw
Lil Mama: and her " lip gloss is poppin, lip gloss is cool"

Then Souljaboy cranked it and of course my son killed the dance.

Then Bow Wow came, as expected, "You ain't fresh azim Is!", etc. He
"addressed" rumors of a riff between he and Chris Brown. Said the haters
were hatin'. Little girl next to us said "he lying, they fought, he got
slammed das why he lyin''. Makes sense to me.

Then Omarion joined as a surprise.

(We interrupt this report to express distress at Omarion and Bow Wow's
height. Bow Wow is oh, roughly My son's size. As far as Omarion, well he
has REALLY hit the gym, BUT 1. he is still Bow Wow's height and 2. his
lower body does not respond to the 1,000 push ups a day he's been doing.
So, with an upper body that belongs to a 185 lb athletic 6 footer
mounted on essentially My son's legs, while wearing (very Kanyesque)
skinny jeans , our boy Omarion looked like a hot air balloon that's got
an Icebox Where His Heart Used To Be.)

The too long intermissions between acts were made better by the fact
that FUNK MASTER FLEX himself was spinning said intermissions. This
was the part where I realized: we parents were essentially "at the
club" with our children and this to us was the better part of the
evening because most of us probably don't go to the club much anymore...
Some of us were even drinking. Our kids were amused and mortified. Then
they would relax because other people's parents were clearly more
embarrassing than their own. I *may* have done the Souljaboy but the mom
behind me was singing Lil Wayne's verse on Pop Bottles:
Poor it on the models, shut up bitch swallow
If you cant swallow, shut up bitch gargle

Then the stage went black and a clock appeared counting down from 4
minutes. Yeah, you heard me, 4 minutes, hormones-galore. Usually one
counts down 10 seconds but in Chris Brownland you count down 60 seconds
as loud as you can, dammit. My son was screaming so loud that by the
time we got to 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 --I thought his ears would pop OR
he would pee on himself, or both.

And then, pyroboomexplosion, hanging on wires suspended landing on
stage: Chris Brown!!!!

My son looked at him (we were extremely close) then at me and in disbelief asked, "Is that REALLY him ?" Yes it is, I said. Then I thought, "my, how he's grown" (ahem).
He opened with Wall to Wall and off he was on his super pop idol
extravaganza.

After a few songs on the main stage, he appeared in a second stage
which was (JACKPOT!) no more than 12 feet or less from us, set literally
in the middle of our seating area. My son freaked out, got on my
shoulders promptly (ouch), so he could wave at CB. He said CB waved
back at him. I am not sure that's true but I am sure that telling him it
wasn't really "at him" CB was waving is like saying Elmo is not real and
I'm not making that mistake again... All I remember is that CB was
close enough that I could see light sparkling on individual sweat drops
on that dulce de leche candy manchild torso of his while he faked sexual
intercourse on a moving round stage. "woah...ok", said I, more loudly
than I intended. "I know girl, I KNOW" said one of the other moms.

For most of the show, my son was singing along and bouncing and bopping
his head and throwin his hands up, keeping his baby-gangsta-stuntin cool
demeanor. But at Kiss Kiss he totally LOST HIS SHIT and started doing
"his" Chris Brown dances--much to the delight of all around him.
Nobody who knows my son but has not seen this before can picture it;
nothing my son does usually prepares you for what THAT SHIT looks like.
Hi.la.ri.ous.

And then, the real P. DITTY came out to rock the crowd and say hello
and tell us how "proud" of CB he is. He also did All About the Benjamins
and Last Night. He walked past us on the exit shaking hands--he is a
very shinny good looking good smelling man in real life. My son could
care less.

Things were wrapping up I thought, when my son asked me (I was distracted
by the fact that Lil Mamma and her dancers were a few rows up wearing
the best clothes ever), Why is everyone screaming at the guy in the
green hoodie on stage ?, so I look up and... THAT IS MOTHERFUCKING 50
CENT. And it was, so my son re-assumed his baby gangsta face and with
proper gravitas, bounced and chanted "I run New York!"

Generational gap: when the slow sing along of WITH YOU came on, Chris
Brown said "lemme see all those cell phones light up the room" And ALL
the children had phones and nobody had lighters.