Last night (November 16th) I attended Rihanna’s highly anticipated show at London’s O2 Brixton Academy in association with Nokia.

The event was billed as being a private gig (invite only) that was due to be hosted at a private location.

I initially thought that it would be taking place in a sophisticated dark intimate setting in some trendy night club. But I almost choked on my D&G Grape Soda when I heard the words “Brixton Academy”.   

“Private” and “invite only” were both thrown out of the window when it was later announced that Nokia would be giving away tickets (only if you owned a Nokia phone) at their London store on Regents Streets, and when I arrived in Brixton there were posters stuck on lamp posts outside the venue promoting the event.

This was an interesting turn of events…

Anyway the excited crowd that gathered to see the singer perform tracks from her new album Rated R were on a whole an eclectic mix of competition winners, industry folk and B/C -list celebrities.  

Rihanna (who I sometimes affectionately call  ‘The Dark Priestess’) appeared on stage at around 8.15pm clad in a black leotard and got straight down to business.

She sang some of her old hits which included, Disturbia, It’s Over Now, Umbrella and then performed new tracks The Wait Is Over, Russian Roulette and Hard featuring rapper Young Jeezy.

Jeezy walked on to the stage dressed in all black and dripping in diamonds. It looked like he had spent the last month raiding diamond mines in Angola courtesy of those crooks De Beers.

Then towards the end the Dark Lord himself Jay-Z stepped out from beneath the shadows (I gripped on tight to my crucifix when he appeared) and performed Run This Town with Rihanna.

This as you can imagine brought the house down.

Now I am not a big Rihanna fan but I did enjoy the show and her live vocals have improved immensely.  She engaged with the audience and did a pretty good job of holding my attention for 45 minutes.

My only gripes were her live band. The music was far too loud and drowned out her vocals throughout, and Rihanna slightly caressing her crotch area.  You really don’t need to go down that road Rih Rih!