We are living in a wackadoo time. Our ex-press secretary did a bit at the Emmys, and people are resorting to porn sites for basic life skills. It’s no wonder that people like myself (gosh, I wish there were a name for that group born between 1980 and 2000, killing modern civilization with apps and a love of the color pink) are nostalgic for any part of our lives other than this one. Our strong desire to snap a bracelet around the past is bringing back Space Jam and TRL. Neither of these was ever applauded for its substance, but their presence is a much-needed distraction from our debt and our country’s imminent demise.
Enter Hot Summer Night in Concord, the concert of top-shelf has-beens: Monica, Mase, Brandy, Naughty by Nature, Ja Rule and Ashanti. My boyfriend, Jake (my partner for all of my horrendous adventures), and I heard the ad for it on Q102.1 (HELLA BAY!) and thought, “We like all those people! And I bet they sound exactly like they did when we were going through puberty. Plus, we can get drunk and hear ‘O.P.P.’ live. And look at this: the tickets are so cheap. This is what’s happening next. Hey, why isn’t Next playing at this?”
Shit hit the fan immediately. While in line for drinks, a woman in perfect makeup fainted onto me.
The event fell during one of the hottest weekends the Bay has ever seen (HELLA HOT!). After pregaming at a friend’s pool party, we headed to the illustrious Concord Pavilion. Shit hit the fan immediately. While in line for drinks, a woman in perfect makeup fainted onto me. Luckily, the people in front of me wanted to test out all the doctor methods they’d seen on TV, including pouring water on her before calling someone over from the medical tent to take care of her. The woman who handed her off to the paramedics looked at me and said, “You gotta stay cool out here,” then turned to the bar and ordered three Bud Lights.
My lifesaver friends in line let me know we’d missed Monica and Naughty by Nature. When I asked if we’d missed anything good, one of them shrugged and said, “Naughty by Nature did a shout-out to Tupac.” We should have realized that if acts were being measured by the quality of their shout-outs, maybe the performances wouldn’t be up to snuff. But Jake and I held onto hope.
We should have realized that if acts were being measured by the quality of their shout-outs, maybe the performances wouldn’t be up to snuff.
We found our seats in time for Mase, who played his songs with his voice track playing in the background, presumably so he could stop physically rapping to tell us about how he’d become a pastor and found Jesus. I have no problem with people finding Christ. I do have a problem with people having to yell about finding Christ because they’re trying to be louder than the sound of their own voice rapping in the background. Also, the part when we were forced to pledge our love to Jesus. He then did his all his parts of “Mo Money Mo Problems” before skipping to the next song. His performance was 20 minutes long in total.
Brandy did all her hits in their entirety, but they all sounded terrible because of the sound system (read: they hit their prime 20 years ago), which she scolded several times. She did try to sing a less popular song, but when the crowd quickly became disinterested, she began to offer to do selfies with people in the front row. No, Monica did not come out to sing “The Boy Is Mine” with her. No, I don’t think that would have made a difference. Yes, I did get us three more Bud Lights during this time.
After this, the radio personalities from Q102.1 came out to rev us up for the joint headliners, Ja Rule and Ashanti. This mostly consisted of them urging us to “drink water, not just firewater!” and to inform us that it was indeed a hot summer night. Some rapped. Without a backing audio track. Some didn’t seem old enough to know who the performers were. But they all seemed incredibly jazzed for the show. The whole crowd did. The energy spread throughout the pavilion and gave people the strength to stand for hour five despite the heat, $20 beers and the faulty sound system (read: the funeral of our youth).
Ja Rule and Ashanti didn’t disappoint in terms of outdated high jinks. Did they do just the choruses of all their hits? Of course. Did they throw in some songs they didn’t originally sing but have been mistaken for doing? Undeniable. Did Ashanti do some solo stuff accompanied by a video of her in a bra in a Jacuzzi, brandishing a knife? You bet.Was all this punctuated with air horns? You know it.
Ja Rule did Fat Joe’s parts in “What’s Luv,” and Ashanti did J.Lo’s parts in “I’m Real,” as if they were a DJ trying to capture anything adjacent to Ja Rule and Ashanti.
Ja Rule and Ashanti also filled in for other singers. Ja Rule did Fat Joe’s parts in “What’s Luv,” and Ashanti did J.Lo’s parts in “I’m Real,” as if they were a DJ trying to capture anything adjacent to Ja Rule and Ashanti.
It took me a minute to realize I’d been had. I think part of me had hoped that Hot Summer Night would be some sort of avant-garde art piece, where the acts’ popularity would rise from the ashes and erase the wounds that adulthood had wrought. The other part of me knew it was a way for the artists to cash in on our propensity to hang on to the past a little too tightly. Ashanti said she had no idea she’d still be doing these songs 15 years later. Everyone cheered. None of us thought so either, but evidently that’s exactly what we’d wanted: figures from our past reassuring us that they still cherished their parts of our upbringing as much as we did.
That moment of union quickly dissipated, as Ja Rule needed to leave promptly at 10:00 p.m. so he could make an appearance at a San Francisco nightclub, and as we know, he is always on time.
