Where his earlier albums made begrudging, closeted fans out of anyone who regularly listened to hip-hop and R&B radio, Trey’s recent body of work lacks both cohesion and age-appropriate personality at 32, he’s too old to make the same corny sex puns work with the flash of a smile. While Trey’s core fan base still watches his moves with heart-eye emoji locked and loaded, in 2017, Songz has lost the undeniable charisma he once enjoyed. While not totally underwhelming - it’s hard to ever truly forget any set that causes you to instinctively body roll alongside thousands of strangers - Songz’s scattered Summer Jam performance was symptomatic of some larger issues. (He is also admittedly a dancer, while Trey is far better suited to the occasional impassioned pelvic thrust). Brown sang erratically but danced with a characteristically frenetic energy that inspired significantly more crowd affection ( from the women, at least). Brown, who received markedly high billing at Summer Jam, was a useful comparison: While Trey made ill-advised detours out of his established lane, Brown stuck to the hits - and the moves - audiences continue to expect of him. He closed his set with a guitar-heavy rendition of “Animal,” the primal single from his March release, Tremaine the Album, and by then the crowd energy had faded to the point that some audience members were busy debating what songs Chris Brown would perform later on. The rap detour was disappointing but not wholly unexpected for the Summer Jam stage, and Trey’s final song fizzled without precedent. After a quick reprieve in the form of club-friendly R&B jam “Say Aah,” Trey invited rappers Tee Grizzley and Dave East (along with Dave East’s mother) onstage the two rappers took up nearly 10 minutes of Trey’s set. But Trey spent the entire song chopping the syrupy, slow “Neighbors Know My Name” into a sloppy, faux-hard-rock medley. The guitar solo rang through the stadium for what seemed like a small eternity, and the audience looked increasingly puzzled as Trey began to sing what could only be described as a rock remix of “Neighbors Know My Name.” One of Trey’s biggest hits, the 2009 track is perhaps the most easily recognizable mainstay in his body-roll-inducing repertoire. Nearly 12 years after his debut, Trey Songz still had women hyperventilating over his every move and men covertly singing along to his hits.īut moments later, Trey stepped toward the back of the stage, sitting down and priming the crowd for a man brandishing an electric guitar. The Charlie Puth–produced slow jam, which chronicles a would-be night out, harkens back to the tender filth of ’90s R&B in both its production and lyrics: “Baby, ooh, I just wanna get you out them clothes / Ooh, I just wanna see you dance in / Slow motion / We can take, we can take, we can take our time, baby / In slow motion.” Each word hung in the 95-degree air as Songz delivered a surprisingly crisp performance the Supreme Yankees–jersey-clad Songz then transitioned directly into another recent sensual favorite, “Dive In,” reveling in the audience’s reaction to his sultry theatrics. It is reminiscent of an earlier era - a neat summary of the Trey Songz who won over listeners in the mid-to-late aughts. “Slow Motion,” off 2015’s Trigga Reloaded, is warm, confident, and almost meticulously sexy. As the screen behind Trey Songz projected prerecorded images of his washboard abs - and brief flashes of him smiling knowingly at the camera as he removed his shirt - the women in the New Jersey stadium sang and screamed and shimmied in unison. But, when the first chords of “Slow Motion” began to play during Sunday night’s Hot 97 Summer Jam concert, one (female) half of the audience started dancing on cue. It’s no small feat to get a crowd of several thousand to erupt into synchronized body rolls.
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