Concert review: Lil Wayne got booed, loudly, at Charlotte show. He deserved it.
At 10:40 on Thursday night — 20 minutes before the originally scheduled end time for Lil Wayne’s concert at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte — a woman in the seat directly behind me started cursing the type of blue streak typically reserved for, well, a Lil Wayne song.
And she was hardly the only fan who was growing more and more irritated by the hip-hop star’s unexplained tardiness: Ten minutes later, hundreds if not thousands of his fans started booing, boisterously.
It was all completely warranted.
“The Greatest Rapper Alive” has an established track record for also being The Latest Rapper Alive, but the garbage he pulled here on Thursday was, in my experience with this venue, without precedent. I’ve never seen so many PNC staffers shaking and scratching their heads at the same time. I’ve never been more concerned that concertgoers at a PNC show might resort to some form of civil unrest.
Let me just lay the facts out there for you before I go any further:
- At 9 a.m., PNC recommended in a post on X that fans should “arrive early,” “to avoid peak traffic.”
- The gates opened on time at 5:30 p.m.
- The scheduled start time of the show, per Ticketmaster and Live Nation, was 7 p.m.
- From 7 to 8 p.m., background music emanated from the front of the house while the house video boards cycled through ads for upcoming Live Nation shows and an assortment of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
- At 8:03 p.m. DJ T Lewis came out and started spinning.
- At 8:44, “T Lew” wrapped his DJ set by announcing that Tyga was coming on stage next.
- Twenty-four minutes later, Tyga emerged and performed a dozen or so songs between 9:08 and 9:37.
- Then the house lights, the background music, and the ads came back on.
- For the next HOUR, NOTHING of significance happened inside PNC, unless you count concessions cutting off alcohol sales at 10:30 p.m., as mandated by the venue. In other words, last call ended before the headliner’s set even started.
Which brings us to 10:40 p.m., when the woman in the seat behind me was getting livid, and then to 10:50 p.m., when fans broke into a loud chorus of boos, and then to 10:55 p.m., when there was yet another round of boos and groans.
And once again, Lil Wayne deserved the displeasure. Just imagine having heeded the warning about traffic and arrived at, say, 5:45 p.m., then having headed straight in. You got a beer, got a snack, were in your seat by 5:55; then over the next FIVE HOURS, you’re treated to 41 minutes of T Lew, 29 minutes of Tyga, and 3 hours and 50 minutes of twiddling your thumbs.
The boos made things interesting — and loud — but otherwise, it was getting quieter after 10:30. Couples and friends were running out of things to talk about, running out of social-media feeds to look at on their phones.
I saw yawning. I saw people just kind of staring off into space.
Meanwhile, there hadn’t been a peep about what was causing the delay. But there was some developing speculation that the venue might unilaterally cancel the show if it got to 11 p.m. and Lil Wayne still hadn’t emerged. No telling what kind of chaos might ensue, in that scenario.
As it turned out, that scenario was avoided. At 10:57, the rapper passed through the gates and under the arch emblazoned with the words “THA CARTER,” white electric guitar slung over his shoulder, massive blunt wedged between the fore and middle fingers of his left hand. And as if it was an otherwise-totally normal night under otherwise-totally normal circumstances, he embarked on a mostly masterful 90-minute-long set showcasing both his deep catalog and his stable of “Young Mula” artists, no apology apparently necessary.
It was affably performed, with Lil Wayne flashing infectious, toothy grins through puffy clouds of weed smoke after every snippet of every song, from monster hits like “6 Foot 7 Foot” and “Lollipop” to deep cuts like “Blunt Blowin’” and ““Tunechi Rollin’.” It was also cooly performed, with him unflinchingly staying on beat and on lyric even when an errant young male fan managed to scramble past security, onstage, and to within just a few feet from Weezy.
It was impressively staged, with adrenalized accompaniment from Matt “Yayo” Mayberry on live drums and T Lew on the DJ board, and kinetic visuals in the form of video, lighting and pyro.
It was even a fun little family affair for a few minutes, with Lil Wayne spitting rhymes alongside his 14-year-old son — stage name Lil Novi — who seems much riper for an eventual breakthrough than lesser Young Money mentees, like heavy-metal screamer Lucifena and bilingual rapper Allan Cubas.
It was a show that Lil Wayne could have been proud of, and that I’d have been grateful to have seen ...
... if he hadn’t been so obnoxiously discourteous.
Even if you walked away from the show after it ended at 12:27 a.m. feeling like it was the best concert you’ve ever attended in your entire life, you couldn’t have possibly preferred that he go on so late, on a school night.
Right? I mean, if I’m wrong, then tell the concertgoers who arrived early to beat traffic that you’re thrilled he waited till 11 to start. Tell it to the woman in the seat behind me, or anyone who let a “BOOOOOO” travel up out of their throats, past their lips, and into the warm, early-fall air. Tell it to the steady stream of fans I saw bolting for the parking lots with several songs still yet to go, as Thursday night turned into Friday morning — to anyone who had to pay the babysitter overtime, or who had to get up for work at 7 a.m.
By the way, it’s no secret that the city can levy some pretty substantial fines on artists who blast music at PNC as loudly as Lil Wayne does after 11 p.m.
So why delay the show for so long if you don’t have to? I don’t know. Maybe he had a good excuse. If so, I’d love to hear it.
In the absence of one, I can only conclude that Lil Wayne managed to waste a bunch of his fans’ time and a bunch of his tour’s money, for no particular reason.
That’s why — when the rapper looked out at a very-ready-to-go-home crowd right before show-closer “A Milli” and said, “Ladies and gentlemen ... you have been nothing but f------ amazing all f------ night, man” — all I could think was: Actually, we’ve been nothing but (expletive) patient all night, man.
Come on, let’s just get this over with.
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 10:49 AM.
