Lizard Queens and Amazing Things

Joi's cool sex-kitten persona was a little too self-contained to really connect with the audience except for a handful of moments in the show (her heartfelt a cappella tribute to her late father, a bit near the end where her simple and repeated belting of the phrase "My name is Joi" whipped the crowd into a frenzy, a guitar-driven version of "Sunshine & the Rain" from her Pendulum Vibealbum). She was like a state-of-the-art music video unfolding onstage: beautiful, carefully scripted and two-dimensional. Joi needed to whip the hat off (it kept her face in shadow for much of her set) and really work the stage. Her sinuous bumps and grinds would put any professional stripper to shame, but they weren't enough to lift the show into the realm of brilliance that it skirted.

Saadiq, likewise, had the moves down pat and has a voice that can flip from sexy player to wounded lover on a dime. And he knows where his bread is buttered; when he sang such trite, unpoetic lines as "To get respect, I know I have to show it," the women lost their collective mind. But despite the crowd's willingness to be putty in his hands, he wasn't able to push his power beyond leading sing-alongs in tunes old ("Kissing You") and new (his single, "Be Here"). It was interesting that someone with the performing experience he's racked up as part of both Tony! Toni! Toné! and Lucy Pearl, and who has worked with the likes of D'Angelo, Angie Stone and Bilal, would be so uninspired in the flesh. It was a perfectly competent show, but for someone so frequently hailed as a savior of "real R&B" and a "grossly underrated talent," he didn't quite live up to the soul-cultist hype. (Ernest Hardy)