Singer, songwriter, and dancer Chris Brown touched down in the New York City area for the fifth stop on the 11:11 tour at UBS Arena Friday night. The tour, in support of Brown’s 11:11 album, his eleventh studio album released in the eleventh month of 2023, is the top-tier entertainer’s most ambitious tour yet, complete with two stages that enable him to sing while he soars above the crowd to and from the second stage.
The 19-time BET Award winner divides the show into four acts, and act 1, called “Fire,” opens with Brown wearing all black. Some of the seemingly endless hits he performed were “Ayo”, “Go Girlfriend”, “Party”, “Go Crazy,” and “Freak.”
Act 2 sees the 14-time Soul Train Award winner wearing a bedazzled shirt with a tank top, blue pants, and white sneakers, and it may be the most entertaining act of the concert. Brown and two male dancers are lifted above the crowd and transported to a second, much smaller stage in the arena with the help of suspension wires while he performs “Wrist.” I suspect many would be terrified by the journey alone, but being able to perform while moving above a crowd of thousands is breathtakingly spectacular. Brown performed “Take You Down” and “Wet the Bed” on the smaller, rotating stage and “Feel Something” when he returned to the main stage. “Pills & Automobiles” and “Liquor” were two of the other songs performed in this act.
The 35-year-old entertainer returned to the stage in a white ensemble and wearing a cap for the first time for act 3 and performed “She Ain’t You”, “Strip”, “Back to Sleep”, “Please Don’t Judge Me,” and his duet with Jordin Sparks, “No Air,” with the women in the crowd singing Sparks’ lyrics.
The fourth and final act saw Brown return to the stage appropriately wearing shorts and a short-sleeve shirt to perform “Sensational” and “No Guidance.” Brown didn’t leave the stage after the fourth set and an algorithm randomly (or maybe not so randomly) listed many of his hits on the screen, and the Grammy Award winner performed the songs that were selected, which included “Show Me” and “Say Goodbye” before closing out the show with “Loyal” and “Grass Ain’t Greener.” The show ended a few minutes before 11:11 pm.
The tour, which features phenomenal choreography from start to finish, is at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York tonight and tomorrow, and will hit most major cities in North America, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Toronto, before its final show on August 6 in Los Angeles.
