You hire Nicki Minaj to be the music section’s wardrobe consultant, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt and two tickets to a Live Nation club show of your choice taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here’s this week’s winning whinge.

Dear Payback Time: John Lucas, who actually came to the Lil Wayne concert for Rick Ross? Those of us with enough musical smarts would have would have come down “sick” at noon in order to get ready to see Mixmaster Mike and Travis Barker hit the stage and avoid getting stuck in the rainstorm outside. We would have danced our asses off during the set and then would have hit the infinite booze line during Rick Ross to get geared up for the scorchers for the evening—Nicki Minaj and Weezy. As for me, my excuse is that I browsed the Ticketmaster website at 5:30 after payday to discover that first-row seats were still available. Imagine that. Admit it, there’s nothing worse than paying 100 bucks for a ticket for the nosebleed seats in the back of the Garage—I mean, Rogers Arena—to have to watch the concert on a screen while listening to slurred words from the kid in the jersey next to you competing with the main act. Who wouldn’t pay double that to see Miss Minaj’s “badonkadonk” strut right by you? Right, we thought so. Enough bragging.

In defence of the “2-for-1 skank sale”, for the girls that displayed their wares, judging by the results of the surgery that we witnessed in the row behind us paid for itself. Had it been me, I would have wanted to garnish my wares as well. Hey, it got them into the after-party. The only thing Lil Wayne could have gotten better was to keep his Canucks gear on until his first set was done. But, hey, Nicki Minaj was hard to compete with, and more than on a visual level. That girl rocked it (minus the lap-dance thing). Disagreeing with you, the time with Ts and the “banter” with the crowd was quite worthwhile. There was more multicultural representation than at a Russell Peters show. And she gave a well-deserved shout-out to all of the Indians that were there. (Her kind of Indian, that it is, not my kind of Indian.) Her lyrics are much more powerful than the dildo that she shook during “Did It On’em”. In disagreement with you, he doesn’t need to leave more of his “Young Money family” at home. He needs to bring more. What if Drake were there? I wouldn’t have been even able to get us tickets on the night of his show. Think of the success of Wu-Tang, rolling in numbers. And add this with the mojo of Young Money’s stage presence coupled with the vocals of performers. Hands down, it would have shook more than it did.

> Kirsten Baker-Williams

John Lucas responds: Dearest Kirsten—This is why I get paid to write concert reviews and you don’t.

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