February 23, 2007 - University of California, Los Angeles Ackerman Grand Ballroom

“Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nothing To F*** With!” That’s all you can say when the Wu, or even a member of Wu performs, because they are simply legends. However, Ghostface Killah’s performance at UCLA was anything but legendary. Coming off of his hit album “More Fish,” Ghostface Killah’s performance was highly anticipated. Having one of the best year’s of his career, due to his release of “Fishscales” just before that, Ghostface was on a high that he didn’t seem to be close of coming down from. However, would this success translate into a great performance? I think not. Waiting for an artist who is late is not that bad of a thing when the artist puts on a good show, but when the show wasn’t even worth the wait, then you know something’s wrong. Luckily for him, being a part of Wu, he’s expected to be late. As he got on stage, with at least 5 other people, neither of which was from the Wu, he woke the crowd up that was restless from waiting, and came out with a lot of energy. From the time he performed, which seemed like nothing longer than 30 minutes of what was supposed to be an hour long set, he performed his lines of a handful of old Wu Tang songs, an Old Dirty Bastard Song as a tribute, a few songs from his “Supreme Clientele” album, a few songs from his “Fishscales” album (and when I say a few, I mean like 2), and Nas’ “If I Ruled the World” which I still can’t seem to figure out why. The rest of the show, it seemed as if he was looking for ways to waste time. At one point he had a freestyle competition by bringing a couple of guys on stage to battle. There’s nothing wrong with that, except the fact that I came to see him, not some random students. During another part of the show, he brought on stage a bunch of girls and had them dance with him, provocatively might I say, on stage for quite some time. And that was it, that was the show. The venue was perfect, the location was perfect, but Ghostface didn’t take advantage of it.

-Vishal Vivhaker