Tyga at the Ogden Theatre, 4/18/12

All right, Tyga was pretty impressive last night at the Ogden Theatre. Okay, more than impressive -- he was damn good, and he has way more hits than just "Rack City." Surprised? We were, too! The line was three blocks long, and the sound was deafening in the venue long before the Young Money superstar took the stage. The lights were almost a show of their own, and people showed up to party and cause mayhem.

YG and Lil Twist were nowhere to be found, but they were pretty unnecessary, even when T-Raww performed some of his biggest cuts featuring the MCs. Bouncing around the stage like his YMCMB boss, Lil Wayne, Tyga, wearing a shirt that looked silk, sunglasses and enough swagger to school a room full of kindergartners, performed his heart out.

His stage show consisted of huge lettering spelling out his name, along with a massive Egyptian sphinx head and a ton of lights and pyrotechnics. It was easy to tell Tyga has either rehearsed this show a dozen times or at least performed this show a dozen times, because he timed the audience's reaction to certain parts of the song with surgical precision.

He wanted smoke, he got tons of smoke. He came out spitting his verses to "Roger That" while the crowd lost its ever-loving mind. He was on to "Maybe" before the youngsters could catch their breath. Drenched in ocean-blue lighting, Tyga used the microphone stand for "Real or Fake," and looking like a young Ralph Tresvant for a second, he performed "I'm Gone" with so much gusto, we could've sworn we saw one security guard mouth to his fellow door man, "Is the floor shaking?"

The bass was loud and vibrating at a rate that fueled Tyga's bouncy energy. He had energy to spare as he performed each of his hits. The Waka Flocka-looped "Hard in the Paint" is always a crowd-pleaser, and Tyga's version definitely went harder than the original. As the show went on, Tyga made veiled references to the shooting incident in Nebraska that caused the rescheduling of his last show in Denver.

He wasn't chatty on stage like a lot of MCs, but he did mention on numerous occasions his gratitude for the sold-out show. He asked the crowd to don their "snap backs," for the song, "Snapbacks Back," then he also went through, "Faded," which was kind of hilarious considering more than half the room was probably between the ages of sixteen and twenty.

"The Motto" was perfect, and he brought out Honey Cocaine for their "Heisman," (parts one and two), and the audience definitely adored her. She rocked one solo track, "Too Pussy To," and plugged her mixtape while taking shots at the heathens who shot her in the arm in Nebraska. ("My new mixtape is called, Fuck Your Feelings, and I'd like to dedicate it to the motherfuckers who tried to kill me!")

We went into this show thinking "Rack City" was Tyga's biggest song, so when it came and went unceremoniously, we thought it was interesting. He finished with "Far Away" and had every hand in the building waving side to side. With that, he waved, thanked the crowd and said, "Peace."

With a song like "Rack City" so heavy in rotation right now, it seemed as though Tyga's chance to bring a bunch of girls up on stage and get buck-wild was largely missed. Ah, but then, for his encore performance, the MC came out to the infamous bass line to "Rack City," and a line of ladies the DJ had enticed on stage with a call of "If you eighteen and up, we wanna see them titties." Ask and you shall receive. Tyga danced around the ladies and frolicked among the bare breasts and then disappeared into a cloud of blue smoke.

Early in the night, KDJ Above heaved the entire sold out crowd onto his back with a DJ set that couldn't have been more than thirty minutes yet was probably one of his best performances. The audience was screaming, throwing themselves all over the place, and there was definitely a fight or three.

Personal Bias: The hip-hop backpack constituency isn't going to like this, but...Tyga is that dude right now. He smashed it.

Random Detail: As per usual, the Ogden starts on time and ends on time.

By the Way: Honey Cocaine needs a little quiet time back at the drawing board.