The first solo tour from Destiny's Child frontwoman Beyonce isn't really a solo tour at all.
Rather, the Ladies First Tour, launched in Fort Lauderdale on Friday night, is a lumbering triple bill co-starring singer-songwriter Alicia Keys and hip-hop goddess Missy Elliott (with negligible opener Tamia) -- all of whom performed separate sets over a drawn-out evening that never quite fulfilled its musical promise.
While the night did occasionally live up to the pretour hype about feminist empowerment, the message was mostly lost amid a rash of expletives, product plugs, deafening audio and interminable set changes that dragged the thing long past midnight.
All that would have been fine if that's what the audience had signed up for. But considering the many very young children on hand to see their pop princess Beyonce, it's doubtful they (or their weary parents) were anticipating a five-hour-plus marathon spiced by some very adult material.
Entering to chants of "where's the real bitch?" concert rookie Elliott ultimately proved the most inventive performer of the evening, as she often does, with her lightning-speed costume changes and rapid-fire dance troupe. Her amped-up versions of "Work It," "Get Ur Freak On" and other signature riffs proved the usual humorous, style-setting tour de force -- even if it did play more like video performance art than anything resembling music. After addressing her fans as "motherf**s," she slipped in a promo for Janet Jackson's new record and was gone in a flash.
Of course, Elliott has no business on a PG-pop bill that is sure to attract young kids, but tour promoter Clear Channel, lately intent on cleaning up radio, doesn't apply its new standards to the road, particularly when the broadening of box office appeal is needed.
In stark contrast were the elegant songs of Keys -- a performer who continues to set herself apart with her knack for cooking up languid numbers evoking 1930s Harlem and such 1970s icons as Stevie Wonder.
Not content to stay behind her grand piano, Keys broke form by gamely leading a few dance numbers and conducting a mock orchestra. Although her set ultimately lasted too long, such songs as "Rock Wit U," "A Woman's Worth" and her megahit "Fallin"' were all beautifully executed and greeted with rapturous ovations.
Beyonce also draws inspiration from many great old R&B classics, but her over-reliance on sampling, freak dancing and meandering riffs that never bloom into full-fledged melodies has grown tiresome and is beginning to detract from all that is good.
With her auburn hair, gold bikini top and gyrating fringed skirt, she was something of a whirling Tina Turner-meets-Charo incarnation, and like Turner, she really does have the vocal chops and choreography to go with it. But her songs, among them "Baby Boy," "Jumpin', Jumpin' " and "Survivor," were so brutally battered by a bass-heavy audio barrage, just about everything she did was unintelligible. Pop stars who can really sing don't need this kind of ear-splitting nonsense.
Not that it really mattered. Ladies First is less a musical tour than it is an event to cross promote causes and products like cosmetics, Jay-Z, cell phones and track suits. On that note, the evening more than delivered.

By Deborah Wilker,
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter