this just in!!! Lil' Wayne a no-show at Rochester concert...

smh...

i ain't even gotta say shit. i'ma let the OFFICIAL news release say ey'thing..

Lil Wayne, the self-proclaimed greatest living rapper, stiffed 8,000 of his fans on Sunday night. Apparently dissatisfied with the sound system, according to Blue Cross Arena officials, rap's biggest seller declined to perform.

What, does our town smell bad or something? Saturday night at the Blue Cross Arena, co-headliner Plies was also a no-show. At least T-Pain and Rick Ross came out for the 5,000 fans on that night. Otherwise, what was to be the biggest hip-hop weekend in Rochester by everyone's recollection is instead being remembered this morning as a rip-off.

Ludacris did his best to save Sunday night — he did a yeoman's job of cooling folks off, in fact — but hundreds of fans left after the announcement that Lil Wayne would not be performing, and that full refunds would be provided. Others merely sat in their seats and chanted barnyard slang for bovine waste matter.

Ludacris, who like Lil Wayne popularized the Dirty South rap style before he moved on to life as a TV and film star, was quite clearly the man of this broken weekend. He filled the hall with hits, keeping a good portion of the crowd in the venue and surging toward the stage to see him, sending chairs sprawling. When Ludacris called for people to get out their cell phones and lighters, the darkened hall was filled with hundreds of pinpoints of white and blue lights. His professional and lively set was fast-paced and free of the pointless chatter that particularly corrupted T-Pain the night before. And, despite Lil Wayne's expert opinion, the sound system worked perfectly for Ludacris. He saved what could have been an ugly scene.

The early going on Sunday was a lot of Been There, Done That. The shouts from the stage of "Rochester, MAKE SOME NOISE!" Some guy introducing an act, but also remarking "We've already had one skirmish," so please refrain from giving hip-hop a bad name. And a handful of training-wheel rappers and divas with songs that all sound remarkably the same. The audience response? Eight-thousand people on sedatives. Occasional chants of "Weezy! Weezy! Weezy!" were a subtle hint that the crowd was growing weary of the preliminaries and wanted Lil "Weezy" Wayne.

As the night wore on, the crowd grew less subtle, and increasingly edgy. Where were the headliners? They must have sensed that something was truly amiss when a trio of rappers was jeered from the stage, right before the no-show was confirmed.

The Queens identical twins Nina Sky could do nothing to hold off this sentiment, despite some familiar refrains such as borrowing a chunk of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams Are Made of These" and a variation on the old school kiddies theme, "If you're sexy and you know it, clap your hands." Falling flat was Nina Sky's attempt to get the crowd to chant the bovine waste matter slang, a word that appears in the title of their upcoming single.

JSPEVAK@DemocratandChronicle.com

jaycee's post-commentary:

dissatisfied with the sound system??? after spending damn near 5 hours tweaking ey' little high hat and 808 kick, guitar strums, keyboard taps and what not????

i could say a buncha snarky shit but c'mon man...fuck outta here with that shit. that excuse does not fly with me at all...