Secondhand Setlists

In this humble establishment, I realized I would never in my life get a better view of the capitvating TiaCorine Show.

Though less than a two-hour drive from where I grew up, Columbus, Ohio remains mostly a mystery to me. Landlocked and dripping in scarlet, the city appealed less to me than the then-depressing city where I came of age. Today, I look at both my hometown and state with different eyes, curious to know more about the places I could never completely explore as a kid and then have missed out on as an adult living coastal.

Live music offers a wonderful chance for this type of exploration, and a terrific opportunity presented itself when TiaCorine brought her debut headlining tour, the Almost Here Tour, to the Woodlands Tavern.

The drive from Cleveland to Columbus took just under 120 minutes, enough time to consume one full TiaCorine project and two podcasts. I made a full day out of it, meeting up with my most fascinating friend, Ashley, who raises livestock, owns a carriage business, and showed me the regional Amish wonder that is the Busy Beaver. A sushi stop, an IKEA run, a Jeni’s date, and a stroll through Dublin, OH later, it was time for me to head to the Woodlands.

The venue lay in the middle of what appeared to be a residential area, initially making me nervous I’d entered the wrong address. From my parking space, the inside looked a bit empty, only adding to my anxiousness. However, as I approached the door, I heard a rumbling bass coming from inside that confirmed I’d found the venue.

I arrived to catch a bit of Honey P, a local artist who won a contest to open for the tour (I would learn later that games play a big part of the Almost Here tour). The finale of her set I enjoyed the most, but try as I might, I cannot find the song on her Spotify.

Following Honey P came a rather interactive intermission from a guy I presumed was part of the show. Cracking jokes (“I’m not gonna say anything because there are barbz in this room…”) and starting chants (“Free Palestine), he handled himself rather well for a role that no one asked him to do. At one point he asked different folks to come to the mic and share their talents, which I listed out as best I could:

Saint Rockstar Dayton
Boujee Dre (Drake)
Indica Blows
Melinamarie (Dayton battle of the bands)
DØN
Lainey Baby Art
Amethyst (comedian)
Salzburg K (dancer)
Rakwaya(?) (singer/rapper)
Ragdollart.com
Big Baddie (rapper)

Seeing so many creatives from Ohio getting to gas themselves up put me in a good mood, a mixture of positive vibes and a smidge of Buckeye pride. It’s a shame then the aforementioned MC turned out to be a random person that neither Tia’s team nor the venue could account for. As if touring wasn’t hard enough already…

Thankfully, the next person to take the stage ended up being a pleasant surprise for me. A.R. the Mermaid, a rapper from Tennessee, reminded me a bit of Maliibu Miitch: petite, long dark hair, deep voice. Whereas Miitch hails from NYC, A.R. comes from Memphis. She mostly let her bars do the talking, her husky timbre hyping up the room with the catchphrase “This shit on the floooo.” Simple yet effective, the perfect statement to make at a show.

Another pleasant surprise – A.R. the Mermaid is a bit queer! She proudly shouted lines like “I want your friend, bitch, not you!” clearing said bitch and the air simultaneously. Flanked by two dancers, the rapper laid all her cards on the table with the romp “Watt We Doingg,” all while referencing Monaleo and Suki to boot. I’d have liked to see more of A.R., especially with her two dancers, but alas they needed to clear the stage for the main event: TiaCorine Show!

After such a great set of openers, the audience was primed for TiaCorine to take the stage. In anticipation of her arrival, her team placed two Japanese weeping cherry trees on either opposite sides of the stage. Under the gay (rainbow) lighting, the trees became canvases that displayed an array of colors. TiaCorine’s own hair, a platinum blond, matched the reflective effects of the blossoms, reflecting a kaleidoscope of hues. The vibrancy recalled her own chromed-out, oversaturated album artwork and visuals, imbuing the venue with the proper ambiance for the TiaCorine Show!

Like the rainbow, TiaCorine, too, shone in more ways that one: rapper, singer, geek, personality. She told Flaunt her favorite tattoo is of Mew, a cutesy yet powerful and extremely versatile Pokémon, a factoid which parallels her skills as a jack-of-all-trades. Her voice carried when she spit – thought a backing track played, you could hear her over it clear as day. Singing-wise, the vocals were there for “Find Yours” and “34 Villain.” The lighting coupled with the color-reflecting quality of her hair and set décor (which she later told me she had picked out herself) leveled the hell out of her stage presence. The stage felt full with just her essentially walking and bobbing across the stage, and that’s a feat. Of course, songs like “Bonnet” and “Boogie” would go hard at any function.

Halfway through the set, she departed for a quick costume change. During this time, a strange melody played from the speakers: the Jeopardy theme song set to a trap beat. Obviously some tomfoolery was afoot, mischief confirmed once the rapper returned wearing a pantsuit and mustache. And so began TiaCorine Show!, a soundbite the DJ repeated to the point of nonsensicalness.

The quick-witted Tia gathered four audience members to partake in three rounds of games, the challenges being: give a great pickup line, consume a Fruit by the Foot the fastest, and draw a dick on a whiteboard with closed eyes. Just as before as a performer, TiaCorine dazzled in host form. She grew laughably serious thrusting the whiteboard cocks in our faces for us to judge them, and flipped wardrobe malfunctions into cheeky jokes: “The way she ate it [Fruit by the Foot] made me nervous. My mustache almost fell off!”

Looking over the setlist while writing this review, the length of it struck me – 27 different sound breaks/sections (22 if you only count songs and no intermissions) total, a lot for a tavern show and debut headlining tour. I added up all the official runtimes for the first 13 songs, the total just clearing 30 full minutes. Live, it was definitely shorter than that as plenty of songs only got one verse and chorus altogether. I typically prefer songs to run their full runtime, or at least not feel as though they’ve been cut short. In TiaCorine’s case, I actually thought the shorter times worked for her show. Despite being relatively young, she has a catalog long enough to perform over 20 songs and still leave off my own favorites like “Luigi” and “Chaka Khan.” But by the time she closed with “FreakyT,” none of us could say that TiaCorine Show! came up short in any capacity.

Knowing that she’s signed to Interscope makes sense given her talents, but also makes me nervous. The label has often fumbled a multi-faceted woman in hip-hop, so hopefully TiaCorine bucks that trend for good. Because TiaCorine Show! could get global syndication, and if the world responds accordingly, this would be the last time I’d ever get to see it so intimately.