With the men’s basketball team already in Indianapolis gearing up for the Final Four, Kid Cudi and N.E.R.D. brought a different kind of crazy to Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The two artists performed Thursday night as a part of Cameron Rocks, an event sponsored by the Duke University Union. The performance reinvigorated a concert series that had been dormant since 2007, when rapper T.I. played with support from indie-rockers Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Cleveland rapper Kid Cudi, who was nominated for three Grammy awards this year, opened the concert around 8:15 p.m., and his performance lasted for about an hour. He played a set that included hit singles “Day ‘N’ Nite,” “Memories” and “Soundtrack 2 My Life.”
After Kid Cudi, the hip-hop group N.E.R.D.—composed of Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo and vocalist Shae—took the stage along with a handful of instrumentalists. The group ran through tracks from its three prior albums, interspersed with stage banter that frequently encouraged audience members to get louder and more raucous.
The performance even saw some crowd participation when the group called up about 20 women from the audience up as dancers for their 2002 single “Lapdance.”
As of 12 a.m. Friday morning, 90 percent of the concert’s tickets were sold, DUU Major Attractions Director Liz Turner, a senior, said. Of those sales, 3,000 went to students and 1,200 to the general public.
Turner said she was pleased with the show.
“There were maybe a few speed bumps, but I think the students really enjoyed it, I think the artists really interacted with the crowd,” she said. “We showed that this could be a great tradition and we were able to bring it back and really pull it off.”
The audience was energetic and responsive to the artists, but an issue arose during Kid Cudi’s set when audience members with general admissions tickets began to crowd the floor. Security returned attendees to their appropriate seats.
During N.E.R.D.’s performance, Williams encouraged the crowd to come closer to the stage and onto the floor, appealing to concert officials, as well. By that point, however, the crowd generally stayed in its seats.
Cameron is not often tasked with accommodating events of this nature, but Turner said she thought the music sounded decent during sound checks and even better with thousands of bodies filling the stadium.
But not all students were impressed by the quality of the sound, and several raised issues with the acoustics of the show.
Despite some questions about sound quality, most students interviewed generally said they enjoyed the concert.
Junior Richard Bracken said the event even overshadowed a more high-profile campus event that occurs annually on the last day of classes.
“It was a great concert,” he said. “Acoustics were great, man. Could we trade LDOC for Cameron Rocks, please?”
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