Concert review: Big Guava Music Festival, Day 1 (Friday) with Outkast & others

Maybe it was the ominous ever-present banks of clouds overhead or the odyssey-like journey through their relentless deluge to get to Tampa’s farthest reaches, where the Big Guava Music Festival awaited us and ultimately, Outkast. Maybe it was the lead-up – navigating the fairgrounds amid erratic changes in wetness, from shower to drizzle to light sprinkle, seeing snippets of other performers while the sense of anticipation grew ever higher and excited buzzing louder as the clock edged closer to 9 p.m. and Outkast’s headlining set. Maybe it was all those years of waiting and wondering whether or not the seminal duo would ever reunite, if maybe we’d never get to see them tear up a stage, and make us dance, bump, slump n’ groove, hoot or howl or sing and rhyme along, throw our hands in the air and wave ‘em like we just don’t care, laugh, cry, say o-yea-yer, blissfully lose ourselves in the funky, soul-rooted hip hop tunes… [photos by Tracy, text by Leilani]

Whatever it was – when the lights dimmed, the curtain dropped from the giant transparent cube that rested in the middle of the amphitheater stage, and the play of lights and shadows on its glass formed the black-and-white flag of Stankonia, and Andre 3000 and Big Boi came storming out from its depths to launch into “B.O.B.” — that amphitheater exploded in a tidal wave of pure rapturous energy as thousands of ecstatic fans burst into cheers, screams and dance, the mass of bodies transforming into a sea of frenetic movement, all waving arms and choppy hand gestures, bobbing heads and dipping bodies, shaking asses and shimmying torsos, fueled on surges of adrenaline that hit peaks throughout the night as Outkast cycled through cuts off five of their six albums (Idlewild made no appearance) and a few odd non-album cuts, and kept the explosive energy up and pumping through much of the 24-song set…

***

Day one of Big Guava didn’t have the most promising start. The drive from St. Petersburg took more than an hour through rain, rush hour traffic and general slow-going. By the time we rolled into the fairgrounds, it was past 6 p.m., there was still a light drizzle, and the first grouping of acts had played and gone.

We hit the Expo Hall and caught a few minutes of Twenty One Pilots, long enough to hear the duo’s keys-and-synths driven rap-sung alt rock radio hit, “Holding On To You,” which was quite enough to drive us outdoors to hunt for craft beers and cocktails, and take a wander around the fest’s miniature-scale midway, which featured stages set up at either end, an impressive sampling of rides, carnival games, inflatable installations, and food truck offerings ranging from steak kabobs to jerk chicken to Filipino hamburgers. But because of the inclement weather, the area was mostly deserted except for the spots directly around the stages.

The amphitheater’s general admission floor was only about half-full for Sleigh Bells while the pavilion seats were only scattered with bodies. But frontwoman Alexis Krauss – clad in a strappy rivets-studded tank top, similarly riveted stone-washed cut-offs, white sneakers — swung, tossed and thrashed her long tangled black hair as she shook, shimmied, skipped and rocked out from one side of the stage to the other, pumping up the crowd as much as her band’s heavy washes of bombastic sound, a noise pop/dance punk mix carried on crashing and pounding beats that always managed to be danceable.

We returned to the Expo Hall for a few songs of Cake’s trumpet-slapped rock as led by talk-singer trucker hat-wearing lead John McCrea, and left after the cheeky “Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle” to check a few minutes of Vic Mensa's set before Outkast. Accompanied only by a DJ, the Chicago emcee held court for a small crowd of a few hundred who’d gathered around his stage. I stuck around long enough to hear my favorite track, “Orange Soda,” then scurried to the amphitheater.

Swarms of people headed in the same direction, more than I'd seen anywhere all day, leaving no doubt about which Big Guava act everyone had paid the steep single-day admission price to see. As the place really started filling up, security closed off the floor and then the first row of pavilion seats, limiting it to people with VIP wristbands. Security did not allow re-entry to those who left – not without a wristband, anyway. Probably for the best, since those sections got pretty wild once Outkast — Andrew 3000 clad in black full body jumpsuit reading ‘F#ck 3000,’ white shag wig, big chunky sunglasses and a shit-eating grin and Big Boi with a thick gold chain swinging over his baggy two-piece get-up and ‘Big Boi’ team ball cap on his head — hit the stage and unleashed the fire.

They were backed by a full band – drummer, bassist, guitarist, DJ, two-piece horn section, a pair of howling female back-up singers — and complemented by dazzling sprays of lights and lasers, a giant screen of ever-changing visuals (heavy on shots of round, mostly bare rump shaking women), and the cube, which made for a rather eye-catching visual on its own, when paired with the right lights (see right).

From the explosive launch of “B.O.B.” to the uplifting, energetic close of “The Whole World,” the setlist flowed seamlessly through groupings of hits and deeper cuts from the Outkast catalog, Stankonia into Atliens into Aquemini into Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, before each rapper performed his own three-song solo Speakerboxxx/The Love Below/etc. interlude. Big Boi’s was higher energy and ended on the sexy grooving note of “The Way You Move” with guest Sleepy Brown (who made more appearances throughout the night) in full-on silk pajamas mode — while Andre 3000 delivered a couple of slower jams, then brought the crowd’s flagging energy back up with the break-neck dance pace of “Hey Ya!”

Suffice it to say, there was something special in the air that night. Big Boi even stopped for a moment at one point to comment, “Man, the energy in here is incredible.” And it really didn't sound like he was blowing smoke, because we all felt it, too. Everyone in that place was on board from beat one, myself included, and we broke it down like youthful fools and soaked up every minute.

A girl behind me kept shrieking “Oh, god, oh god, I love you! I love you!” in these blurted outpourings of emotion, that you could tell she just couldn't hold in, as if the words were spewing forth from her very soul. I didn't blame her. I felt the same way. And all I had to say about it was, o-yea-yer.

Courtesy of Setlist.com.
B.O.B.
Gasoline Dreams
ATLiens
Skew It on the Bar-B
Rosa Parks
Da Art of Storytellin', Part 1
Aquemini
SpottieOttieDopaliscious
Ms. Jackson

(Big Boi interlude)
Kryptonite (I'm on It)
(Purple Ribbon All-Stars cover)
GhettoMusick
The Way You Move
(with Sleepy Brown)

(André 3000 interlude)
She Lives in My Lap
(Vibrate intro)
Prototype
Hey Ya!

(Ole' School Set)
Hootie Hoo
Crumblin' Erb
Player's Ball
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
Elevators (Me & You)

(Ending)
Roses
So Fresh, So Clean
Int'l Player's Anthem (I Choose You)
(Underground Kingz cover)
The Whole World

This article appears in May 1-7, 2014.