Less than a week after winning two Grammy awards, artist Kehlani stepped onto the stage to headline the Big Game Block Party in San Jose Friday night. And the crowd went wild.
The event — and the afterparty in San Francisco immediately following it — represented a victory lap of sorts for the musician who received two Grammys, one each for best R&B song and best R&B performance, for their song, “Folded,” on Feb. 1. In one of the acceptance speeches, they made headlines for denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Kehlani Ashley Parrish has deep Bay Area roots: they grew up in Oakland and attended the Oakland School for the Arts and Berkeley High. During the show, they took a moment to welcome out-of-town visitors here for the Super Bowl and celebrate the magic of the Bay Area.
“I’m always so grateful to be able to come back and see when massive events get to happen in the Bay, and all these people get to come…and see how magical we are. Because for so long, only we knew how magical we were,” they told the cheering crowd. “So, welcome.”
Friday’s performance was a tightly choreographed set, featuring songs like “After Hours,” “Gangsta”, “Change Your Life,” “Everything,” “Honey,” and newer works including “Folded” and “Out the Window.”
Kehlani’s performance was the culmination of an afternoon and evening of the San Jose City Hall’s transformation into the epicenter of a music festival celebrating a diverse array of talented Bay Area artists and musicians. An estimated 15,000 people were expected to attend the event, which was the first time the City of San Jose had organized a large festival-style event with a private organizer, according to a public works department spokesperson.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan made an appearance, saying that the city was “committed to making sure the party was in the South Bay.”
“So have fun tonight, come back for DJ Dom Dolla tomorrow, check out San Pedro, enjoy Super Bowl Weekend. And then we’re going to do it all over again for March Madness and the World Cup,” he said.
The block party kicked off with a set from Bay Area DJ Ethan Dreams, followed by a genre-bending collaboration between Bay Area harpist GEO and San Francisco native, DJ Salenie. Next up was Kiyomi, a singer-songwriter from Union City.
Then Fijiana, an Indo-Fijian rapper from Richmond, performed, followed by San Jose-based DJ RCADE, and the final act before Kehlani was Noodles, a Filipino-American DJ from Hayward, who gave shoutouts targeting specific subsets of her audience, whether they were from the Bay, horny, single, Latino, emo b—-es, Filipino, or 49ers fans, and rounded out her set with Bay Area favorites, like E-40’s “Tell Me When To Go.”
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