Rihanna puts in work at The Forum
May 5, 2016
Rihanna shined even brighter than a diamond for her second night on May 4 at the Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles in support of her album “Anti” that was released earlier this year. The singer performed several tracks from that album as well as new and old hits from her large discography.
The show started when her band began playing the opening notes to her sultry ballad “Stay” and Rihanna emerged from the middle of the crowd wearing an all-white hooded cloak. As the singer emerged, the crowd became reminiscent of beatlemania as they all shrieked for the Barbadian singer.
The show really picked up when Rihanna played two back to back songs entitled “Woo” and “Sex with Me” from her newest album. The latter being a bigger sing along than I had expected. All at the same time, Rihanna impressed the crowd with her dance moves as she was accompanied by an array of back-up dancers, especially getting down during the bombastic banger “Bitch Better Have My Money” and the up-tempo dance hall number “Rude Boy.”
However, the best dancing of the night happened when Drake surprised the crowd to come out for his and Rihanna’s smash hit “Work” and proceeded to dance with Rihanna. The crowd absolutely erupted and Drake then took control of the show while performing “One Dance” and “Jumpman.”
At some point Rihanna took a break from singing after doing one of her several costume changes throughout the night to ask the audience, “are you all having a good time?” The audience of course responded with grand applause and Rihanna then asked, “you would tell me if you weren’t right? I know y’all paid a lot of money to see me,” which got a good laugh out of the crowd.
Rihanna ended the show with a collection of songs including the powerful ballad “Diamonds” where the whole crowd pulled out their phones to illuminate the stadium, the psychedelic cover of Tame Impala’s “Same Ol’ Mistakes”, the folky gospel Paul McCartney driven track “FourFiveSeconds” and the rock anthem “Kiss it Better.”
Rihanna dazzled the crowd with her voice, dance moves, live band, and everything else that made this a night I am not “anti” toward in the slightest.