LMFAO: Cheesy fun, and they know it

Article by: JON BREAM , Star Tribune
Updated: May 26, 2012 - 12:06 AM

LMFAO brought a spring-break attitude, Dollar Store props and dance-floor bounce to Target Center on Friday night. It was colorful, energetic, sweaty, booze-fueled, mindless fun.

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The fans wore Afro wigs, day-glo outfits and "Let's Get Wasted" T-shirts. The star sported a giant Afro, tattoos sprayed on like fluorescent graffiti and a series of T-shirts emblazoned with song titles by his hit-making duo. There is no party quite like an LMFAO party.

LMFAO -- featuring the youngest son (Redfoo) and a grandson (SkyBlu) of Motown founder Berry Gordy and their smash hits "Party Rock Anthem" and "Sexy and I Know It" -- brought a spring-break attitude, Dollar Store props and dance-floor bounce to Target Center on Friday night. Like any good summer frat party, it was colorful, energetic, sweaty, booze-fueled, mindless fun.

LMFAO are cheesy, and they know it. And unapologetically silly, sleazy and successful. They walk the line between stupid and clever. They drink out of red Solo cups but also display their rock-star wealth by spraying the audience during the hit "Champagne Showers." They ask a young woman to work her assets but with a crafty line like "shake that booty like it was an Etch-a-Sketch." They strip down to their Speedos for "Sexy and I Know It," but SkyBlu is wearing a red sequined elephant with long trunk codpiece.

It's all a cartoon that makes LMFAO seem like the Cheech and Chong of hip-hop -- from Redfoo's lenses-free glasses to the goofy lyrics about playing Twister naked. Borrowing a page from ABBA (simple, infectious sloganeering choruses) and two or three from Black Eyed Peas (contagious beats, an explosion of colors),

LMFAO specializes in party-rock anthems that double as jock jams. The music is irresistible if you listen with your feet.

Like a hip-hop perversion of a Jimmy Buffett beach-o-rama event, the 95-minute show had more of a low-rent than high-tech feel. Those inflatable palm trees, beach balls and confetti sprayers could have come straight from your neighbor kid's bar mitzvah party. And Redfoo isn't much of a singer (even with Auto Tune) or rapper. SkyBlu, who showed off a fast flow on a couple of tunes, seemed more in the background this time than at previous Twin Cities gigs, opening for Ke$ha and Black Eyed Peas. The other change with major stardom is LMFAO was more PG and less sexually charged.

Still, the 6,100 fans partied like it was 1989, when Zubaz and dance-rock were big and disco was just a memory. But LMFAO, now sporting custom-made versions of Zubaz and beats that bounce around an arena, carried on with such nutty abandon that it was clear that they're serious about being silly. That's why LMFAO is such an appropriate moniker (ask a teenager if you don't know what it means). Anyway, Ludacris was already taken.

set list: startribune.com/artcetera @jonbream • 612-673-1719