SUGAR WATER FESTIVAL
Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
August 13, 2006
featuring
KELIS, JILL SCOTT, QUEEN LATIFAH and ERYKAH BADU
by Karla Russell
for VocalMusician.com
This was the second year of the Sugar Water Festival. The crowd expected more and we got more!
This year's opening act was KELIS, a young ingénue who came on the hip-hop/r&b scene in 1999 with the angry woman anthem, "I Hate You So Much Right Now." Back then KELIS had two mediocre hits from her Kaleidoscope album, but was better known for her wildly untamed afro which she had dyed a shocking pink. Now - seven years later - she has cut her hair, gotten a perm (she should have kept the afro) and put out a mildly enjoyable hit called "Bossy." Tonight, she was a good warm-up act and she possessed enough self-awareness to know when to get off stage. She did three quick songs - the best one being "Till the Wheels Fall Off" which had a really funky beat and will be included on her upcoming album Kelis Was Here. The album is due out on August 22, but in her 10 minutes onstage, she managed to hammer that little tidbit of information into our brains over and over again...
A new addition to the Sugar Water Festival this year was hostess Mo'Nique who was wonderful at keeping the crowd entertained - and in stitches - between artists and while the crews did onstage break-downs and set-ups. Mo'Nique followed KELIS onstage and immediately cursed out the band for not playing her theme music, "Bow Down," so she could make a proper entrance. Her monologues were raunchy, at times profane, but funny as hell. Now back to the singers...
JILL SCOTT was next. She has lost some weight, but still maintained her beautiful physique. SCOTT opened with delicious poetry describing the beauty of just being alive and glorious. She segued into some new songs that will be included on her upcoming album. These new songs were jazzy, bluesy and dreamy. SCOTT hit high notes and ran lyrics together until the listener felt wrapped and rocked in warm soft cashmere. In between songs, she threw out bits and pieces of political and relevant poetry along with scathing observations of the state of some black women. Just like last year, SCOTT wowed the crowd - weaving seamlessly from her old albums to a lot of new material which she let the audience decide whether she should record. Of course, the crowd loved everything she gave. Her band was also flawless - following her vocals down the path, no matter which way she turned. They never missed a beat. At one point, SCOTT and her trumpet player (who was from Maryland) had a trumpet-to-voice conversation. Bravo! SCOTT was onstage for 40 minutes and the crowd cried when she left.
For some reason, it took a long time for QUEEN LATIFAH to enter the stage. When she did, she looked kinda bored. Wearing a red top and white stretch jeans with brand new red and white Hurricanes, she came onstage to "All Hail the Queen" and the crowd was with her. LATIFAH immediately lost her earpiece, so she was winging it for most of her set. The sound people did not help the situation - LATIFAH had to deal with massive feedback and dead microphones. But she held her own as best she could. She sang three songs from The Dana Owens Album including "California Dreaming" - which she changed to "Maryland On My Mind" - and "Simply Beautiful." Merriweather Post Pavilion has giant screens on either side of the stage. For some reason, the camera man was focused on LATIFAH's pianist, so those of us watching the screens didn't get to see who sang the lead male vocal on "Simply Beautiful" and that was disconcerting. LATIFAH then did a new song called "A Good Woman," which was dedicated to the women who have lost brothers, fathers, husbands and sons in the war. It was a good piece which brought the audience to tears. But she brightened our spirits again by returning to her hip-hop roots. She ended her set with "UNITY" - she had to or the crowd would have rioted.
At last year's Sugar Water Festival, ERYKAH BADU seemed like a drug-crazed, looney - slurring her words into the mic and stumbling around the stage. This year, she was exquisite. Wearing a bizarre kimono-dress-bondage-boot ensemble (you had to see it to understand) and a humongous Bootsy Collins-type afro wig, she was musically intact and emotionally in touch with the crowd. She and her band laid down some serious funk for about 15 minutes with BADU manning the drum machine. Then she hit us with vignettes of ALL the hits from her Baduism album, threw in a few funky tracks from Mama's Gun - including "Kiss Me On My Neck" - and gave the crowd an 8-minute funk/jazz version of the cop-hating-weed-loving crowd favorite, "The Block." At the end of her set, she called the rest of the ladies onstage and announced that this would be her LAST Sugar Water Festival. No announcement was made as to who would take her place. But, whoever it is, they'd better be funky, because we will be back next year.
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