Review: Ludacris and T-Pain live up to being this year’s hottest State Fair grandstand ticket

A surprise on par with all the people raving about the deep-fried ranch dressing this year, the hottest-selling ticket in the 2024 Minnesota State Fair grandstand concert series wasn’t to see a classic-rock dinosaur act or a country bro, as is the case most years. It was for Tuesday’s show with the rapper behind “Move Bitch” and the singer of “Booty Wurk (One Cheek at a Time)” fame.

Ludacris and T-Pain — longtime compatriots from the neighboring states of Georgia and Florida, respectively — sold out the grandstand and maybe finally sold the fair’s bookers on booking more hip-hop.

The scene: The mostly millennial-aged crowd was packed to the top of the grandstand in time for T-Pain to take the stage right at 7 p.m., which we have to believe/hope is normally what time the famously party-hearty singer rolls out of bed. Clearly, the 14,005 fans had come to see him as much as Ludacris.

During both performers’ hourlong sets, the audience proved to be as much fun to watch as the stage. Fans twerked and gyrated en masse all night, many of them still able to offer up dramatically sexy moves even after an afternoon of gorging on fair food.

The music: Combined, the two performers’ set lists read like a playlist from an FM hip-hop station in the 2000s. They each not only steamrolled through their own pile of hits, they threw in a lot of songs in which they were featured artists, such as Justin Bieber’s “Baby” and Usher’s “Yeah” in Luda’s case and Flo Rida’s “Low” and Lil Jon’s “Snap Ya Fingaz” from T-Pain — so many songs, a lot of them had to be cut into shorter snippets to cram them all in.

Biggest takeaway: The two performances were a sharp contrast between one artist putting on a rather no-nonsense display of his vocal talents (Ludacris) while the other goofed around a lot, and was indeed seriously fun (T-Pain).

Like a lot of rappers-turned-actors who return to the road after hitting movie screens, Luda (aka Chris Bridges, age 46) seemed intent on reminding the crowd his high-wired lyrical skills are what made him famous in the first place. From the time he hit the stage emphatically delivering the words “Welcome to Atlanta” until he wound down his set with “Get Back,” he stayed in strong rapper form.

Coolest moment: Midway through his set, Ludacris revisited many of his earliest hits with his turntablist, DJ Infamous, egging on fans to see if they remembered them. Did they ever. Some of the most excited responses were for “What’s Your Fantasy,” “Money Maker” and “Stand Up.”

Low point: While Luda rarely put down his microphone, T-Pain treated his mic more like a prop. With the AutoTune effects prominently featured in many of his biggest hits turned down low, the 39-year-old singer spent a lot of his set just mouthing along to pre-recorded vocals. Fans didn’t seem to mind, though, since they stood in for him a lot. Some of the loudest singalongs included “Bartender,” “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)” and the Wisconsin-referencing “Can’t Believe It.” He did plenty else to entertain the crowd, too, including his next-level Sexy Dad Moves© dancing and his many funny asides.

Best banter: Ludacris offered a funny third-person vantage point after “Rollout (My Business)” saying, “I remember when Ludacris be rapping his [butt] off.” T-Pain cornered the market on stage banter, though. For example, early in his set he urged to audience members to “go home and have sex afterward.”

“I’m just predicting the future, and like a landslide you’re going to [fill in the blank],” he said.

There were more funny quips than that, too, but we can’t share them here lest we get in trouble with editors and/or give the fair’s gatekeepers more reasons to be sheepish about booking hip-hop stars like these.