Date: May 10, 2024

Venue: Palladium Times Square ( New York City)

Tour: 7 Days Commitment Tour

Building a career as a recording artist in the post-90s has felt increasingly like a seemingly insurmountable challenge for a few reasons. First, as record labels have become more desperate with weakening economic fundamentals of the music business (the onset of which coincided with the emergence of illegal music file-sharing through avenues such as Napster in 1999), they find themselves tethered to an insatiable need for a constant hit factory from their artists. This is a tall order. The age-old tradition of grooming an artist over a span of three albums is now an antiquated concept. Second, the pressure to follow-up a stellar and highly successful debut album almost always sets up an artist for a metaphorical fall with their sophomore album (despite the merits of the album). The US music press and gatekeepers cannot seem to break away from their pattern of being wedded to narratives (e.g. constantly perpetrating the myth that an artists or band’s signature single or debut album is the best or only noteworthy thing they did and repeating that idea ad nauseum) that they have created around artists and bands. This problem is experienced far more acutely by non-American artists/bands that have become casualties of the US music scene’s gatekeepers’ geocentric bias – an unfortunate syndrome that dates back to the mid-90s. British R&B superstar Craig David found himself at the receiving end of all three dynamics. Under the circumstances, his recent resurgence over the last 8 years is nothing short of an astounding miracle. His meteoric rise to global ubiquity while he was still a teenager with his landmark debut album “Born to do it” was a career red herring – at least until recently. Despite releasing a slew of radio-friendly singles over several albums, it seemed like his glory was inextricably linked to his stellar debut. The lyrics of his single “Rise and Fall” (a duet with rockstar and Police frontman Sting from his sophomore album “Slicker than your average“) seemed eerily prophetic. The only thing the song (which samples “Shape of my heart” from Sting’s 1993 “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album) did not predict was his resurgence against all odds while breaking through to a new generation of fans with his Big Narstie collaboration “When the bass line drops” – the beginning of a new era for him in the limelight – one in which he managed to jettison the “faded popstar” label. His mainstream resurgence was primarily a European phenomenon. Yet, it gave Craig David enough momentum to return to American stages for his TS5 gigs (a concert format that features freestyling, DJing, and singing live with backing tracks) in recent years – but his “7 Days” Commitment tour (more than a subtle nod to his biggest hit in the US) featuring seven concert dates in the US is his first time playing with a live band in the US since 2001. Admittedly, the scale of the shows is far smaller in the US than that of his European shows. In a strange way, the intimacy of the US concerts feels like a reward for American fans that stuck with Craig David and his music through the years (even the far less celebrated ones) – and boy, what a rich reward it was as the hits flowed one after another.

Palladium in Times Square (New York City) was the perfect venue for Craig David. Its layout leaves room for those in the audience to dance to the up-tempo hits being performed on stage while its size (a capacity of 2100 persons) facilitates the intimacy that accentuates the emotional impact of Craig David’s soulful crooning – something he gave the audience an abundance of. The sheer diversity of the audience was staggering and unlike any I have EVER seen at a concert in recent years. There appeared to be no predominant gender-based, race-based, or age-based demographic. There is no greater manifestation of an artist’s versatility than his or her ability to transcend traditional identity boundaries. Great artistry is not generational and it is fair to say that the former teen-star was so much more than the music press gave him credit for.

Dressed in white, Craig David got on stage a little after 9 pm and opened strong with “What’s your flava?” (the lead single from his sophomore album “Slicker than your average”).  He led with dynamite performances of legitimate hits such as “Fill Me In” (his first UK #1 single), “Re-Rewind” (his collaboration with the Artful Dodger and his first taste of the limelight as a featured vocalist), “Ain’t giving up” (a collaboration with Sigala that propelled his comeback) and “Hidden Agenda” – all of which have enjoyed immense ubiquity in pop culture. This seemed like an effective approach instead of starting with the relatively obscure and slowly working his way up the popularity scale of his songs. The large screen behind him and the band featuring visuals that brimmed with a spirit of escapism and moderate hedonism made for the perfect stylistic accompaniment to the action on stage.

Rather unsurprisingly, through the setlist, Craig David emphasized songs from his first two albums given that they were the only ones that received any real mainstream exposure in the US. Fortunately, he did not take it too far to the point of coming across as a nostalgia/heritage act. He did perform his new uptempo single “Abracadabra” (a collaboration with Wes Nelson). The two other incredibly noteworthy surprises were “I Know you” (which he indicated was a celebration of people across all identities coming to share a moment together – one in which their shared humanity is all that mattered), and the utterly fantastic “Got it Good” (a song from Canadian producer/rapper Kaytranada’s album “99.9%”). The latter, in particular, was one of the concert’s highlights. Craig’s finest moments were in the acapella sections of a few song outros – the finest one being on “Rendezvous” in which the melismatic swirls in his soulful croon undoubtedly made everyone in the audience melt. It was achingly beautiful to say the least. In the era of technological camouflage mechanisms such as Pro Tools and auto-tune to obscure the vocal inadequacies of some of the so-called “artists of today”, Craig David showed us all how it is done in the concert’s moments of sonic minimalism in which the strength of the performance rested entirely on his vocals. Age has clearly not eroded or undermined the purity of Craig’s vocal aesthetic. He sounds as amazing as he did when he first burst into the limelight.

Any artist with a celebrated career that has spanned a quarter of a century is likely to run into the issue of having to make painful trade-offs while putting together a setlist. Should the setlist be hit-heavy? What aspects of the catalog should be showcased? How much relative obscurity is acceptable (and in the US, where a lot of commercially viable radio fodder falls outside the limited sphere of the so-called mainstream, this is a non-trivial question)? In this realm, Craig David largely got it right. His only missed opportunity stems from the absence of songs from albums 3-5 (with the exception being “Don’t love you no more” from “The Story Goes”). While as albums, these may have not held a candle to his million-seller “Born to do it”, they most certainly feature some of his finest moments as a vocalist. Songs such as “Hypnotic” (from “The Story Goes”), “Officially Yours” (from “Trust Me”), and the Stevie Wonder-esque “All Alone Tonight” (from “Signed Sealed and Delivered”) would have made far better inclusions than a remixed version of “Fill Me In” and a cover of the Diana King 90s hit-single “Shy Guy” (featured on the soundtrack of the movie Bad Boys starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith) did. Concerts are a great avenue to kickstart a renewed love affair with fans by helping them discover something they love but didn’t necessarily know existed (after all, Craig’s third album “The Story goes” did not even get an official US release). Every concert should have at least a limited slice of the setlist that facilitates a journey of discovery for concert attendees. In my case, this setlist opened up my blind spot to “Got it good” – a song I had conveniently overlooked despite having featured a song called “One Too Many” (a collaboration with Phonte from hip-hop duo The Foreign Exchange) from that same album regularly on our 24/7 online radio broadcast (NOTE: we’re an online radio station that broadcasts worldwide).

It is tempting for artists that have comebacks against all odds to be fueled with a newfound arrogance. In the case of Craig David, he appears to take NOTHING for granted and instead brimmed with a child-like gratitude right through the evening constantly thanking the audience for sticking with him through the years. His resurgence is a gift to his ardent fans and gives him a platform to remind the world yet again that he is one of the greatest voices of the generation of musicians that rose to prominence in the early 2000s. Us American fans could not get enough of him as he swept us off our feet repeatedly for over 90 minutes at Palladium in New York City. I wish him another quarter of a century of creativity and vitality. Our music scene would be a LOT duller without him. I can barely wait for what the next chapter of Craig David’s career heralds.

Here is a video highlights reel of the concert:

STAR RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

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