Sean Kingston brings reggae to Regents

When the Regents Center doors opened at 7 p.m., this fall’s concert attendance had already surpassed that of any SAC concert in the last four years. With 2,250 tickets purchased, the Sean Kingston concert was a sold-out event. At 7:30 p.m., the gym floor and bleachers were packed with concert goers whose excitement reverberated throughout the building.

“I think it went really well,” SAC Concerts Co-Chair Laura Forst (‘11) said. “The crowd was really into it, and I like that we brought out a different crowd than usual.”

Generally, the fall and spring concerts don’t sell many tickets to people outside of the Luther community, but Kingston’s name brought more people to campus.

“This concert had about 900 people from outside Luther,” SAC Concerts Co-Chair Matt Olson (‘10) said.

Kingston’s opening band, New Boyz, took the stage at 7:30 p.m. and riled up the crowd with their catchy hip-hop style. The young performers toured the country with Kingston, and Luther was their last stop before heading out on another tour with Chris Brown.

After driving through the cornfields and arriving at their tour’s last performance, New Boyz were surprised to find a crowd like the one in Decorah.

“This last show was, for me, the livest of our tour,” Ben J said. “We were not expecting that.”

After New Boyz got people dancing for 45 minutes, they left the stage and the crowd got ready for Kingston.

Kingston, his bodyguard and New Boyz took some time to relax and play basketball in the North gym between acts.

“Their manager told us that the gym access was really nice because they’re always touring and spending time on a plane, a bus or in a hotel,” Forst said. “She said they never get a chance to just be kids.”

Kingston also met with a few groups of students and took pictures prior to his half of the concert. One group of 20 prospective students were given tickets and backstage passes by the admissions office.

Just after 8:30 p.m., the main act took the stage and the audience went wild. Kingston’s reggae beats and club mixes filled the Regents Center for an hour.

Kingston ended his set with his popular summer song, “Fire Burning,” and left the stage somewhat abruptly, leaving the audience without an encore and confused as the lights came on. Coordinator of Student Activities and the Union Trish Neubauer was more prepared for such an exit.

“We were told that hip-hop shows are shorter than others,” Neubauer said.

Olson and Forst also knew that the show would end differently than what people were used to.

“We had a chance to see the set list, and we knew he didn’t plan an encore,” Olson said. “That’s just how he did the tour.”

It seems that Luther just wasn’t quite sure how to react to Kingston’s short performance. However, although students were miffed by Kingston’s exit, the SAC fall concert was an overall success with high attendance and excitement in the days right up to show time.