variety.com
14.05.2023 / 02:45
Missy Elliott Brings the Party to the Outskirts of L.A. With Ultra-Rare Show at Yaamava’ Resort: Concert Review
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Perhaps you saw the gossip-site reports coming out of the Lovers & Friends Festival in Las Vegas last weekend: Allegedly, Chris Brown and Usher had gotten into some kind of tiff backstage during Missy Elliott’s set. The two singers went on to… Wait a minute. There was a Missy Elliott show? Stop the presses … this seemed like a case of burying the lead, as they say in news circles. Hip-hop fans knew what the real headlines should have been on that story: A unicorn had been sighted during a full solar eclipse, as Halley’s comet made a rare pass over Brigadoon — or other metaphors to that effect — if Elliott was being sighted back on a stage. Something slightly rarer still occurred Tuesday night in southern California’s Inland Empire: a stand-alone headlining show by Elliott. As one tweeter put it: “Why Yaamava’ Theatre?” — wondering, reasonably, why Elliott was following her festival appearance not with a full tour or, say, a night or two at the Hollywood Bowl, but a one-off gig at a 2,500-seat theater at a casino-resort at least an hour outside of L.A. in off-the-beaten-track Highland? The Vegas festival and subsequent casino concert are it, as far as what’s on Elliott’s public itinerary following the news of her impending Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. The last time she did anything like a standard tour was 13 years ago, and since then, Elliott might not have done much more than a dozen full sets, almost all of them at festivals, none in theaters. So no wonder the cheapest tickets on the day of the show for her SoCal appearance were going for $500-plus.