DWT Manchester: Rihanna Stan

I'm so irritated right now! Completely besides myself, want to know why? It's simple really. Because I feel like blogging!! You're probably thinking "So do it then, what's the big deal?" but the big deal is this. I have a specific set of pictures that I am very keen on sharing with you which I took with my proper camera after a couple of photo walks with friends, but then I got home and got ready to transfer the pictures to my laptop, it was then I realised I had two major setbacks. One, my camera USB cable seems to have disappeared on me, I've never transferred pictures off it before so I'm not even sure there was a USB in the box but that seems like a ridiculous notion! So I switched to plan B; get the memory card and just put it straight into my computer, thwarted again! There is NO memory card reader slot on my laptop!

Can you see how this would be very frustrating? Now until I either buy a USB cable or find a way to connect a memory card reader to my laptop then I'm stuck with no pictures! :(

Do not despair though for I have a back up plan! Today we can broach one of my favourite topics... Rihanna!! :)

For those of you who don't know, I am a proud Stan! There is nothing else to say about it other than it is true and I will admit it again unashamedly any day, anytime. I don't really understand what there is to hate about her, I can understand feeling indifferent though. I'm indifferent about a lot of things, but Rihanna is not one of them! She's young, she's beautiful and she's rich! Haha. She also lives her life the way she wants too and though she's a bit extra sometimes, like the stan I am, I forgive her for her muchness and blame it on the fact that she was a star from such a young age! Almost 10 years now to be precise.

So as I have now confessed where I stand maybe you will understand this post a bit more! You see, last month I went to the Diamonds World Tour in the MEN Arena! Whoop whoop! It was my second time in the arena, but my first time in the standing area. The decision to go to the show was extremely whimsical, I think I got my tickets the night before or something because I decided I couldn't let her pass right through my city and not see her! So at about 4pm, Tomz and I got ready to start the entire process that will eventually see us to the front and centre of the stage!

We got dressed and ready to hit the road.

I have no idea what she's wearing and I didn't think to ask as this was never meant to be an outfit post! But I'm wearing TopShop from head to toe, lol, except my shoes which are Nike Blazers and my belt by Ferragamo.

As we got closer to the arena you could really start to feel the buzz, there were people giving out some pretty awesome stick on tattoos which were actually infused with the scent of her new fragrance Nude. I loved the concept! Rih and all her tatts, I was completely unadventurous though and simply stuck it on my hand! Lol.

After a lot of standing around and waiting patiently with palpable excitement (approximately 4 hours worth!) the show finally started! Whooooop! She was opened for by 2 DJ's who together make up a group called GTA (i forget what it stands for) and they were awesome! For the first twenty minutes anyways.

You see I'm pretty sure that whenever you are waiting for your favourite artist to come and rock the stage, nothing is more annoying than some DJ's playing the same type of music over and over again! I don't even know what the genre would be called but I guess their tagline is in fact 'death to genres' sadly it was still all one genre all house/dubstep/electro/drum and bass like. I was quite disappointed and very very tired from standing for hours now but I still managed to keep my smile, somewhat.

And then fiiiiiinally! At about 9.30, the queen Rih finally comes unto stage and it was pretty crazy from there! Most of the night from this point is a bit of a blur, I was so high off her energy and loving every single song she performed singing and dancing around like crazy! Unfortunately (or fortunately) the arena was packed! Stadium Status baby! So there was no room to take some action shots of Tomz and I dancing, there was plenty of room to take pictures of Rih though and she looked amazing! Here are shots of her outfits from the night, she changed so many times!

This is by far my favourite outfit of her! She looks like Iron Man's long lost girlfriend, I loved it!

Literally flawless is she not? And I was so up close to the stage as well! It was amazing, what would have made it even more Rihdiculous would have been if I got to touch her when she came down to the crowd! Unfortunately I was about 1 person too far away from her! Boohoo :( All in all even though her vocals could do with some work she's a pretty amazing performer! "Where have you been" "Cockiness" "Diamonds" and "Rockstar 101" were amongst my favourite performances! She's coming back to Manchester again on Tuesday and I'm trying to decide if I want to see her again, I so would if I can convince just one person of her awesomeness and get them to shell out the cash. But for now it's peace out b*tches! (It wouldn't be a complete Rihanna post if I wasn't profane at least once! lol)

Reni x

Koko Concert: The Israelites Journey to the Promised Land.

So ever since I’ve been back in Lagos I haven’t really gone out, granted it's only been 4 days but the holiday is only 2 weeks long! I’ve seen lots of people yes but mainly at family events and the like so I was excited to finally be heading out on the town last night. My destination of choice, Koko Concert at Eko Atlantic. I was pretty excited to be going to Eko Atlantic, they are basically building a whole new city on reclaimed land and I think it’s a massive incentive that Nigerians should be proud of! The night started like many others, my friends and I deciding what to wear etc. After all the usual hustle all 5 of us are finally ready to roll, we hop in the car and thank Jah that we haven’t been stuck in any traffic from Ikoyi, where we live, to Victoria Island (a.k.a V.I another district in Lagos), little did we know what was waiting for us in V.I. The traffic we hit on Bar Beach road was horrendous! It can’t even be described as snail pace, it was dead locked. No going back, no moving forward! Imagine my annoyance when I saw some people reversing on the other lane to get to the venue faster. You decide if they’re stupid or smart. We decided that the traffic was too much and so we hopped out of the car and followed the masses of people all walking to this same destination. Let me point out that in Lagos it is near impossible to be late for anything! This concert was advertised to begin at 7pm. By 10 pm when I got out of my car it still hadn’t started yet.

2200 hours: We just got out of the car and started walking to the venue; hopefully we would be there in 10 minutes tops.

2210 hours: Oh yay, we are at the gate. Haha to all the suckers to boujis to get out of the car! Wait hold on, where is the place? Why can’t I see it? Oh it’s just a bit further down you say? Okay we’ve already walked this far, might as well keep going.

2220hours: Oh look! Is that Mac? Him and his friends are still in their car, maybe we should have been patient! This walk is taking a bit long!

2235 hours: Yay! Ticket check, I can hear Wizkid’s Azonto playing through the speakers! “Baby dance iyo ke ji jo” it’s boogie time! Oh… Not yet? Where the hell is this place! Why are we still walking!!

2240 hours: I’m scared, I’m cold… We are in the middle of the dessert! It’s dark! Why are we still walking?? Are they taking us to do sacrifice to appease the mami waters (mermaids)?! **flashback scenes of Jenifa part 1 come to mind** my mother would be distraught if she ever found out what we were doing right now!

2250 Finally we are getting our wristbands! I can see the VIP bleachers. Wow, I’m exhausted and thirsty!

Yes you read the right, we walked for AN HOUR to get from the car to the frikken platform, I don’t know what Dapo Oyebanjo was thinking when he allowed us to perform this Israelites journey! During this trek of life I saw all sorts, girls in their Loubs, boys in Tods and I was wondering if they had missed the memo that this concert was on a beach! That is, there is sand everywhere! I felt especially bad for the people who thought their jeeps could compete with the sand. Have you ever seen a tyre whizzing around so fast it’s causing it’s own tornado? My brothers was a Mercedes G-55 stuck in the sand on the way in and on the way back out (yes, we had to walk AGAIN!) the car was still there!! The poor owners, I wonder how they got out eventually!

The show finally started at around 2330 hours and needless to say the crowd was dead! Imagine if you were one of the few that got there on time? Or even before 10! You would have waited at least 2 hours! All in all I would say it was mediocre, there were a couple of awesome acts! My personal favourites were Godwin the violinist, DRB, Burna Boy, Iyanya, Tinie Tempah and part of Big Sean. Pusha T and co were just making unnecessary noise on the stage! Idris Elba as the MC was a complete nuisance, my n*gga was clearly drunk as a skunk! His voice even began to annoy me after some time. Seeing D’banj come on stage in his kingly robes had to be the funniest thing ever, I had such a nostalgic moment, thinking of back in the day when D’banj was the hottest shit ever, he was the best entertainer Nigeria had ever seen! Oh how the mighty have fallen, he might be moving up in the world but his fan base at home is waaay below par, everyone started leaving as soon as he came on. All I wanted to do was dance to Wizkid and Davido, but alas... they never showed up! Only in Nigeria does such happen without even so much as an apology!

There were many many more things wrong with the night, for instance how do you oversell tables of 1 million Naira (£4000/$6500) each and make some of those people have to stand! And then halfway through the night tell these same people to balance their weight because the structure on which they sit might fall! Then as if all of that wasn’t enough, Dapo now had the guts to tell the people in regular and VIP to apologise to the people in VVIP as if we hadn’t gone through our own fair share of bull! (don’t ask what VVIP stands for... I don’t know). Unfortunately, if I keep typing I run the risk of writing a novella! Hmm, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Maybe I can call it ”The Israelites Journey to the Promised Land. NOT”