A camera zoomed in on a lone ‘We Heart Fergie’ sign in the midst of a screaming Carrier Dome crowd Tuesday night as The Dutchess sang her hit single ‘Clumsy.’

Last night’s annual Block Party brought out the teenybopper in the mainly female audience as they screamed and danced to Fergie and reggae sensation Sean Kingston’s radio hits.

The girls clearly loved Fergie’s performance, as she danced and gyrated across the stage and with her dancers, the crowd mirroring her actions, just looking to be entertained by the stars.

‘There were so many girls here tonight,’ said Adele Carr, a senior. ‘I think if the acts were less poppy, more guys would have come, but all the girls around me loved it. Fergie knows how to put on a show.’

Fergie’s show was eclectic to say the least. She opened with the high energy ‘Here I Come’ and segued right into popular single ‘London Bridge.’ Arguably, her biggest hit – the rendition got the hundreds of students and audience members on their feet, standing on the bleachers and waving their hands in the air. On stage, Fergie danced up against two men dressed as Buckingham Palace guards.

She followed up one hit pop single with another, the slower love song ‘Clumsy,’ which elicited more high-pitched screams from the females in the audience, and they yelled the words back at the stage at the top of their lungs.

Afterward, Fergie took a trip to her roots by playing a medley of Black Eyed Peas songs like ‘My Humps,’ ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’ and ‘Where Is The Love?’ Though she only teased the crowd with short, 30-second snippets of the songs before moving onto a dance break.

Dancing was just as much a part of the Black Eyed Peas’ singer’s set as the singing. She shared the stage with her backup dancers, often swaying suggestively past them and even doing flips across the stage.

After changing into a black tank top and skin-tight metallic leather pants, Fergie took another break from her usual radio hits – playing a rock medley that included Led Zeppelin, Heart and Sublime. She whirled around a mic stand and climbed the amps. This got the guys present at the show to sing along, as it looked like most of them were coerced into going by their girlfriends.

‘She was trying to be it all, a rock star, a reggae star,’ said Allie Freedberg, a senior. ‘She kind of wants to be Gwen Stefani, but she wasn’t too superstar about it.’

After the little set within the set, she slowed it down and played two ballads from her album ‘The Dutchess,’ which caused many people to sit down and start texting or leave all together.

Her varied set was broken up by routines by her backup dancers and solos from her band, including an impressive trumpet solo that received half-hearted applause.

Fergie ended her part of Block Party in a black mini dress, singing another radio hit ‘Glamorous,’ which got the girls back on their feet singing and dancing. Though her popular songs were clearly what the crowd wanted to hear, she once again sang a ballad.

‘Finally’ – a duet she sang with John Legend at the Grammys. The performance showed off her vocal talent but went for the most part, unappreciated by the crowd.

But then Fergie knew what the crowd wanted and ended her set with back-to-back hits ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ in which opener Kingston joined her and ‘Fergalicious,’ ending the show with just as much energy as she started with.

‘I think it’s good she spread out her popular songs,’ said Kevin Dong, a junior. ‘The other songs she sang were really only known by people who have her album.’

Block Party opener Kingston did not have as many radio hits to work with as Fergie did, but he did his best to get the crowd into his reggae songs.

Turntables were front and center as a DJ took his time introducing Kingston, playing clips of Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love’ and Alicia Keys’ ‘No One.’ He hyped up Kingston for almost 10 minutes before the 18-year-old rapper took the stage with another singer, appropriately called his ‘Hype Man.’

Kingston opened up his set with single ‘Me Love,’ which got the energized crowd on their feet, bobbing to the smooth reggae rhythm. His Jamaican influence was apparent the entire show, mixed with rap and hip hop elements.

‘I was really surprised by Sean Kingston’s set,’ Carr said. ‘He knew how to get the crowd going, especially when he went out and sang in the stands.’

But if the audience didn’t recognize one of Kingston’s songs, they easily lost interest and sat down and began chatting with one another. The crowd knew what they wanted to hear and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

An a cappella intro to hit single ‘Take You There’ got everyone back up on the bleachers singing along. The Hype Man did his best to get the crowd into the show the whole way, trying to get them to clap and sway along with ‘their boy Sean Kingston.’

Before ending his set, Kingston gave everyone a reminder that ‘Sean Kingston writes all his own music, and he’s only 18 years old… word.’ He then immediately went into last summer’s hit ‘Beautiful Girls,’ in which the girls singing nearly drowned out Kingston – who went out into the audience for the final song. The onstage DJ cut the song midway, breaking up the momentum Kingston had built by proclaiming the audience wasn’t into it. A few minutes later, Kingston returned into the audience to finish his set.

‘This is a lot better than last year’s bands,’ Freedberg said. ‘A lot more people were into it and were entertained.’

eaconnor@syr.edu

Published on April 22, 2008 at 12:00 pm