By Will Roper
Photos by Kayla Solorzano
June 18, 2018
Chingy performs at The Bourbon Theatre in Lincoln, Neb., on June 15, 2018. Kayla Solorzano/KZUM.
The Bourbon Theatre was transformed into a 2000s dance club on Friday night as three classic hip-hop personalities made a stop on their revitalizing Turnt Up Tour.
Club-rapper favorites Chingy, Ying Yang Twins and Petey Pablo took control of the Bourbon stage last Friday for an evening of rapid, memorable sets. The show was completely sold out, with both the main floor and upper levels of the performance bar filled to the brim.
Many music-goers were overjoyed at the chance to see the legendary rappers who have all become synonymous with club hits from the 2000s, even if recent releases have not caught on with the same level of attraction.
Ying Yang Twins have been sporadically releasing newer albums, with their recent Ying Yang Forever in 2017 putting their name back on the map. However Chingy, who has hinted at a project Dead Rose for a couple years now, and Petey Pablo, who hasn’t released anything since his Carolina #1 mixtape in 2012, haven’t been able to push passed their meteoric early-2000s past.
The Turnt Up Tour is looking to change all of that by turning nostalgia into a renewed energy, and while I can’t speak for other tour destinations, it certainly worked for Lincolnites.
First up was Petey Pablo, who came on to an already packed crowd and delivered the exceptionally classic performance that everyone had paid to see. As most likely the least recognizable face out of the trio, Pablo’s stage presence and performance style were exactly as alluring as if he were performing his hit album Diary of a Sinner: 1st Entry in 2001. His 45-minute set included every one of his classic songs, and there were plenty of faces in the Nebraska crowd that could sing along to most of them. Petey Pablo didn’t feel so much an opener but rather the beginning of an immediate, three-headed headliner, and the crowd was more than warmed up for that headliner’s continuation in Ying Yang Twins.
The duo who started their careers as teenagers in 1997 still had the same energy, exuberance and stage presence over 20 years later at the Bourbon as they push into their forties. Classic songs like “Salt Shaker” and “Wait (The Whisper Song)” had the crowd jumping and screaming as they were instantly transported back to an age of long T-shirts and cargo pants. The beats were the same, the Ying Yang Twins’ voices were the same and the turn-of-the-century hip-hop sexual vitality was definitely the same. Similar to Pablo, the duo held a 45-minute set that rarely slowed down and didn’t give anyone a chance to catch their breath. There were newer songs interspersed with the classics, which may have given someone a quick chance to glance at their phone, but otherwise the Ying Yang Twins performance was something no one could take their eyes off of.
Last but not least was Chingy. After proclaiming he was now a grown man and no longer a boy, the St. Louis rapper fired off an eclectic mixture of classics like “Right Thurr” and collaborative songs like “I Like That” to a hyped crowd. Like Petey Pablo and Ying Yang Twins before him, Chingy stuck primarily with the bangers and club hits people had come to see, and he performed them flawlessly. He interacted with the crowd during his songs and seemed to be genuinely having a great time as he walked and danced across the stage to an adoring crowd. Chingy’s set was the icing on the cake for a show that saw the return of hip-hop legends, if only for three hours. The memorable 2018 performance by Petey Pablo, Ying Yang Twins and Chingy was up there with any of their many past performances, and their revitalized energy from their nostalgic hits will certainly carry on as they continue their tour.
Will Roper and Kayla Solorzano are multimedia interns with KZUM.
