Everybody’s favorite Nigerian American hip hop cowboy hit the stage at The Masonic on October 23, bringing to life his concept album full of gunsmoke and revenge. Shaboozey is on his Outlaws Never Die tour delivering songs from his latest LP The Outlaw Cherie Lee and Other Western Tales, about a woman avenging her father’s death. Fans brought in by his lit-yet-melancholic radio mega-hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” were also plunged into the most recent album’s arc: “She’s a renegade with one goal, to find every man that did her wrong/.45 to ya dome, you can’t get away from this smoke,” the singer crooned.
A combination of Wild West set design, full band, dramatic leather trench, and Shaboozey’s characteristic lyrical Easter eggs winking at hip hop history resulted in a show with cinematic scope. Indeed, the singer has told interviewers in the past of his Hollywood aspirations. Given the mastery he’s shown of the United States mashup thus far, the notion of the artist popping up on movie marquees in the future doesn’t seem far-fetched in the slightest. — text by Caitlin Donohue
