Patrons who flocked the Dome of the Accra International Conference last Saturday to be part of the Stand UP GH concert headlined by singer Keri Hilson and rapper Bow Wow did not only enjoy wonderful performances from the two American artistes, but left the venue with memories that will live with them for ages (I will touch on that in the latter part of this review).
Having already hosted a show that brought together the two adversaries in the Ghanaian political landscape and also the older folks, Imajin Advertising put up this show to cater for the needs of the younger generation.
Their first ever show, Legends & Legacy Ball which was used to honour arguably one of the best High Life musicians – Daddy Lumba was seen by many as a show for senior citizens. Rightly so, the show attracted and generated interest in mostly old folks who had lived their life with DL’s wonderfully composed songs.
Performing in Ghana for the first time on Saturday, Bow Wow wowed the patrons with a staggering and energy filled performance. Bow Wow proved that he can indeed rock. Same can’t be said of the main headline artiste, Keri Hilson – though she didn’t disappoint, her performance fits the ‘ordinary’ description.
Before Wow/Hilson, local artistes such as Chemphe, Rana, Kaakie, Kwaw Kese, Edem, Guru and Buk Bak had warmed with crowd with ‘mixed’ performances. Some of their performances were just too ordinary and forgettable whiles the rest gave the audience their monies worth.
Before the show, the organisers had announced that, the show will start at 8pm and end at 12midnight. The idea of having a 4 hour show was welcomed but certainly not practical. For whatever reason, there was no red carpet for interviews and photos, so GhanaCelebrities.Com had to move from the auditorium to the backstage to grab exclusive photos as we wait for the start of the event.
Singer Chemphe opened the night with his peace song plus two other songs. Hip Life Trio, Rana were next with a beautiful dance routine. They performed couple of their tunes. Their performance looked forgettable until, Kobi Rana, a member of the group announced of the dance battle between their dancers made up of girls and boys with Beyonce’s ‘Run The World’ song.
The dance battle looked good. The nicely done choreography helped their performance.
Next was Kaakie, who looked just ordinary. It’s rare for a new artiste in Ghana to have three banging songs, something Kaakie has but didn’t capitalise on. With three big tunes ‘Ewo’, ‘Too Much’, ‘Toffee Pon Tongue’, Kaakie could have done far better out there. She can do better than she did.
I don’t want to be slapped on the fact with the ‘hater’ tag so I will leave Kaakie alone but I think she needs grooming to stay up there. Case close, I’m not saying more.
Kwaw Kese does not only parade himself as a ‘mad man’, he lives it. For someone who parades himself as a mad man, it’s difficult to comment about his fashion sense; after all, it won’t be short of his madness but I think Kwaw needs to grow up and graduate in terms of how he looks on stage.
The idea to have him, Edem and Guru perform one after the other for three times didn’t actually work for me. After Kwaw Kese and Edem had performed the former’s ‘Ma Kwan’ song, they left the stage and there entered Guru. The crowd were disappointed but little did they know that, there will be three rounds of performances from the 3 entertainers.
Even though the suspense trick worked perfectly well on the crowd, it would have been nice if each of the three artistes had been allowed to perform their three songs at a go and vacate the stage.

When it was Buk Bak’s turn, things got exceptionally interesting. I told you in the first paragraph that, I will tell you why the crowds left the venue fulfilled.
To say almost 99% of the people in the auditorium were there to watch Bow Wow and Keri Hilson perform will be saying the obvious – because the local artistes had been seen over and over again perform.
But the manner, Bright Bling Bling Sparkles and Ronny Coaches of Buk Bak went about their performance did add something great to the show. Their entrance wasn’t any different from what we have always seen though. Buk Bak is a hit making group and has lots in their repertoire.
With Mzbel [reasons coming shortly] not performing, Buk Bak were the last to perform before the two American artistes. Without wasting much time, they took patrons back to those days with ‘Chingilingi’ – one of the biggest Hip Life tunes ever and got the house singing and dancing along.
Predictably the crowd expected them to just perform their hit track ‘Kolom’ but that was saved for the last. The duo second song was ‘U For Know’ another high tempo tune. They performed ‘Ator Me Line’ and completed their wonderful performance with ‘Kolom’. They showed so much energy on stage and involved the audience as they ‘Kolomise’ crowd.
From my perspective and perhaps that of many others at the show, their performance surpassed Kwaw Kese, Edem and Guru’s based on the reason I stated above.
Their performance did put the crowd in the right mood for Bow Wow – who in my estimation should have been the headline or the main artiste but I guess his current overall fitness in music compared to that of his Keri Hilson explains why.
Bow Wow rocked it harder from one song to the other. The rapper appeared excited and surprised when a young lady he invited on stage to perform one of his songs rapped the lyrics. He exclaimed ‘wow’ as the young lady made her way off the stage.
Before he vacated the stage, he said as a rapper his job was to make sure the crowd were fully entertain-making him fulfilled. He used  every minute he had after each song to tell the crowd how excited he was to be in Ghana and castrated his compatriot rappers back home for their lousy excuses of not coming down to perform in Africa.

After close to an hour of waiting because of technical difficulties, the main headline artiste Keri Hilson was next. As the crowd wait for the headline artiste through no fault of theirs, this is where the DJ should have come in with songs to excite them but he did not.
Miss Keri Baby as he prefers to call herself did well but considering Bow Wow’s magic, she was confined to the second best of the night.
Keri talked too much on stage when she should be performing – making her show a little boring to the stomach. Except being a foreign act, Keri didn’t work for me; I strongly believed Bow Wow stole the shine off her.
Most people didn’t wait to see her complete her show. Event organisers should be mindful which artiste they put up to climax a show – this is important.
Stand UP GH concert was a great show with good experience but I think it will be forgotten soon.  Imajin Advertising next show is Legacy & Legends Ball in September.
Check out pictures of the show in our next post.