There’s crowd work — and then there’s crowd work, Ludacris-style.
In an hourlong set that covered all his hits plus a bit of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and a shoutout to the Bay Area for having the best weed in the world, Atlanta rapper Ludacris sent Outside Lands’ Lands End stage into a froth of rapturous audience participation like nobody else all weekend.
It was the rare set that began almost 10 minutes early, with a prerecorded video compilation of cable news commentators saying his name (or possibly just the word “ludicrous”). Sporting an afro and clad in an Amiri-branded shirt with the number 55 printed backward, the 47-year-old then launched into a frenzied parade of his dozens of hits, including “Act a Fool” — from the high-adrenaline 2003 movie “2 Fast 2 Furious,” in which he starred — “Southern Hospitality,” and “Money Maker.”
In a nod to his extensive reach in hip-hop and R&B from the early 2000s through the present day, he looped through Missy Elliott’s “One Minute Man (Remix),” Enrique Iglesias’ “Tonight (I’m Loving You),” Taio Cruz’s “Break Your Heart,” and Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” all of which he was featured on.
It was a masterclass in audience engagement, interspersed with constant call-and-response, particularly on the refrain from “Glamorous,” his song with Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie (“If you ain’t got money / Take your broke-ass home”). Over the years, the Lands End Stage has evolved to become a high-production spectacle, but Ludacris’ background visuals were minimal. It was all him, jumping up and down, in the flesh — with tens of thousands of people chanting the lyrics.
Throughout, he and hype man DJ Infamous exchanged playfully belligerent banter about which side of the audience had the bigger fans, and whether Infamous was underestimating San Francisco’s love for Luda. At one point, he had half the Polo Field holding up their middle fingers and extending them to the other side. Prior to “Area Codes,” one of his best-known tracks, he switched things up to stay in keeping with the times. While the lyrics talk about having hoes all over America, he asked the crowd, “Where are my beautiful independent ladies at?”
As the performer himself noted at one point, it’s been more than 25 years since his first record, 1999’s “Incognegro.” By that metric, Ludacris could well be considered a legacy act, but this late afternoon set was as fresh as it gets.
