review1

Beyoncé shimmied on her knees, dressed in those famous booty shorts and a bejeweled sleeveless top, surrounded by her troupe of 10 dancers. "Crazy in Love" blared loudly, a little too loudly, as she sang "Got me looking so crazy right now," backed by blinding spotlights, an occasional tower of flame and flashing video screens.
Just as the dizzying spectacle bordered on sensory overload, Jay-Z made a surprise appearance to deliver his rap, taking the mania a step further.
Then, the confetti cannons discharged.
They should just put her name in 10-foot lights - oh wait, they did - Beyoncé is a star. That was the point of her entire 70-minute extravaganza, from the opening where, tossing rose petals over the crowd, she was carried to the stage on a bed, Cleopatra-style, to the finale where she climbed on a hydraulic lift and seemingly was raised to the heavens.
Beyoncé knows how to bring the glam, a talent she's shown time and time again with Destiny's Child. For her first solo tour, she doesn't disappoint, though the constraints of having only one album of material to draw on sometimes creates problems. "Hip-Hop Star" simply isn't worth the full rocked-up treatment it gets. Neither is the throwaway ballad "Speechless," especially when placed aside great versions of the Destiny's Child hits "Say My Name" and "Survivor."
Alicia Keys, however, had an even tougher time filling out her 70-minute set. Her latest soulful single, "If I Don't Have You," was a showstopper, the best performance of the evening by far. Her recent hit "You Don't Know My Name" was a close second, even though the power of the Grammy-winning voice was slightly upstaged by an ill-advised attempt at interpretive dancing.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the set felt like filler - too many meandering arrangements, too many stunts like conducting her 10-piece band or giving her background singers (charming as they were) their own solos.
Keys has two solid albums, and she's clearly a great singer, but she hasn't quite figured out how to sustain a whole set.
This was even more noticeable following Missy Elliott. After all, the rapper ripped through 18 songs in 35 minutes, barely pausing to let the audience catch its breath. (Her label mate, Tamia, opened the evening with a similarly impressive five-songs-in-13-minutes ratio.) She just pounded us relentlessly with one hit after the other in a shock-and-awe campaign that went from her first hit, "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" from 1997, all the way through her current single, "I'm Really Hot." It was only after she was done that the power of her performance, especially on "Work It" and "Get Ur Freak On," actually sank in. It may have been Beyoncé's party, but Elliott was definitely the lady who came in first.