Pitbull threw a party out Wednesday night at the Pavilion at Star Lake, and it was a rager, even if it didn’t quite go all night.
The rapper and pop artist out of Miami (hence the nickname “Mr. 305”) kept the crowd jumping with a battery of hits from the past 15 years. He rose to stardom in the late 2000s and topped charts in the 2010s with several upbeat club hits.
He brought a friend with him to kick things off — T-Pain returned to the area, bookending the summer here. He headlined at Stage AE on June 12, and his opening set on Wednesday struck all the same chords, even if he professed to being very hungover. Running through bangers including “All I Do Is Win,” “Buy U A Drank” and “Blame It,” he handily accomplished his mission to get the energy up for Pitbull.
The headliner, along with a band, half a dozen backup dancers and DJ Laz, swarmed the stage to the Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right.” As a chandelier of lights in concentric circles flashed and fuzzy images played out on the screens, Pitbull leapt into “Don’t Stop The Party.”
He was dressed in black from head to toe — including his signature shades — and he and his dancers strutted their stuff up and down the backlit stairs as he performed the pumping, island-inspired song. As it came to a close, smoke cannons and sparks excited the crowd.
“I want to start out by saying thank you to everyone representing from all over Pennsylvania,” he said. “We came here to do one thing and one thing only, so when I say ‘who came to party?’ you say, ‘we came to party.’”
And everyone sure came to party.
This is not an artist with a setting below 11/10. From then on, it was high-tempo hit after hit. “Hotel Room Service” and “Rain Over Me” followed, featuring plenty of fluid, serpentine dancing and more smoke cannons. “International Love” was filled with body-rattling bass and cobalt blue lights.
At several points, DJ Laz took over to spin a few crowd-pleasing snippets while Pitbull and the dancers disappeared for costume changes.
As they swept back on, DJ Laz played James Brown’s “I Got You” before Pitbull launched into his own tune, “I Feel Good.” He’d donned a white jacket and the dancers had changed into fringed red bodysuits with plenty of cutouts.
“Let’s take it to the ’80s right quick!” he said. Bon Jovi’s “Livin On A Prayer” started, mixing into “Feel This Moment,” a song on which Pitbull collaborated with Christina Aguilera. The song samples A-Ha’s “Take On Me,” another ’80s classic.
“This next record, a good friend of ours in the industry, this was a big remix for him,” Pitbull said. He was talking about reggaeton rap hit “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee, one of the night’s hottest moments. He rapped the song, throwing it to the crowd for the Spanish-language chorus, while plumes of fire flanked the dancers.
The latter half of the show was pure recognizable pop hits from the 2010s, starting with the horn-laced “I Know You Want Me” and followed by a tune he recorded with Jennifer Lopez, “Get On The Floor.” That one was a crowd favorite; they screamed at the top of their lungs as he and two backup dancers strutted up and down the stairs.
When Pitbull came back from another change — this time adding a red jacket — he wasn’t alone. T-Pain joined, and the two performed their collaboration “Hey Baby.” It wasn’t the best song of the night, but they looked like they were having pure fun together, even jumping into a quick little synchronized dance routine, accompanied by the guitar line from Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”
“I want y’all to give a big big round of applause to T-Pain. … Appreciate you, baby,” Pitbull said before T-Pain left for the night.
Pitbull did his best rapping of the night on “Fireball,” a perfect club song that was accompanied by actual columns of fire. He paused to give a toast — or as he prefers, “salud!” — that led perfectly into the next song: “Life is not a waste of time, and time is not a waste of life, so let’s not waste any time getting wasted tonight and have the time of our lives.”
“Time Of Our Lives” felt like the zenith as far as energy went, nothing but pure positive pop that had thousands jumping with exuberance at 10 p.m. on a Wednesday.
After one last quick change when he added a cowboy hat, he performed “Jumpin,” a song that samples House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” and then “Timber,” a Western-inspired jam that originally featured Kesha.
“This next record is my favorite record to perform around the world, because it’s about how I turned my life from a negative to a positive,” he said. He launched into his own story — what he called “Pitbull 101” — about moving around to 25 different schools and being kicked out of his last high school for rapping in the hallway.
“Ironically, in that same high school, there was a teacher that believed in me, when I was hopeless gave me hope. Ironically her name is Hope Martinez. … In that same high school she turned to me and grabbed me one day and said, ‘I believe in you.’ And those words changed my life, changed my trajectory.”
“Due to that, we learned how to build schools,” he said as images of a high school filled the screens. The public charter school in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami has been open for a decade, and there are now a dozen more like it around the country.
‘Whether you believe it or not, whether it’s by design or default, y’all, I want to celebrate and congratulate, y’all are part of the same family as well,” he said.
He led the crowd in a quick call-and-response of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” and then began the set’s closing song, “Give Me Everything.”
The party didn’t last too long — including the interstitial DJ sets, the show only went on for about an hour and 20 minutes — but Pitbull partied hard while the party lasted, with a slew of hardworking dancers and musicians to back him up.
