Last Thursday's N.E.R.D./Common concert did little to disappoint the audience who came to see the double-bill at Hard Rock live.
Armed with a live band that included not one, but two drummers playing simultaneously, N.E.R.D. members Pharrell and Shae launched into the roaring "Anti-Matter"; the first notes of the song's guitar riff the only announcement of the band's arrival on stage.
The response was immediate: Several fans greeted the group's Prince-meets-License To Ill-era Beastie Boys-meets-foam party at a sci-fi convention sound with hands giving the sign for "live long and prosper."
The sonic jihad continued followed by the twin assault of "Brain" and "Killjoy," off N.E.R.D.'s premier album In Search of... and newest venture Seeing Sounds, respectively.
Pharrell, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and a backward baseball cap, initially had trouble hearing him throughout the first few songs, signaling to have his mic turned up.
But these mishaps did little to ebb the energy of the evening. Pharrell seemed amped up almost to the point of aggression, introducing the Seeing Sounds ballad "Sooner or Later," ("…sooner or later / it all falls down…") with a speech about the current state of the stock market.
Later, Pharrell hand-picked male members of the audience to come onstage and dance with the band during the raucous "Lapdance," which compares politicians to strippers, but not before a rallying cry to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming election.
After the song finished and the audience members went backstage, Pharrell called out one lucky fan named David who the band had met with at their hotel before the concert, and thanked him personally for being "a real N.E.R.D. fan."
Pharrell would bring more audience members on stage to dance with - this time all females - for "Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom)" and "She Wants to Move," the sole representative number from N.E.R.D.'s second album, Fly or Die.
Chicago rapper Common's set teemed with sexual energy of a different variety. If Pharrell and company played to hip-hop's party crowd, Common appeared more as the b-boy with a touch of class.
On a set with an open bar and active bartender and a sign in the middle of the stage that read "Tonight: Common/N.E.R.D. SOULED OUT," Common brought up a young female from the audience to join him at the bar as he serenaded her with songs such as "The Eye," one of several tracks off his forthcoming album, Universal Mind Control.
In a set rife with old favorites such as "I Used To Love H.E.R.," and actual love songs such as "Come Close," and "The Light," it was surprising, the newest songs that gathered the most response. Most notably, the mock-Afrika Bambaataa synth of "Universal Mind Control" set off a firestorm of enthusiastic cheers.
Other pleasant shocks in Common's set came when he performed his verse from Kanye West's "Get 'Em High," a cover of Nas' "NY State of Mind" re-hashed as "Orlando State of Mind," and, during the encore, both "The Corner" set to the beat of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's "Deep Cover," and an epic freestyle that lasted approximately 8 minutes.
Having put so much into his set, Common bled after accidentally biting his lip. Seemingly exhausted, he used this lull to address critics labeling him unfairly as a "conscious rapper" and "backpacker."
"What I really am, is 'The Gladiator,'" he said, introducing a brand new, almost metal-sounding, track of the same name, asking the audience, "Are you not entertained?"
After solid sets by both headliners, few would be fool enough to admit they weren't.
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