West Coast All-Star Tour feat. Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube, Comerica Theatre, 9/14/2012

Photos by Jim Louvau

Snoop Dogg performs at Comerica Theatre on Friday, September 14. See more photos from our slideshow of the concert.

---

West Coast All-Stars feat. Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube @ Comerica Theatre | Friday, September 14, 2012

---

"Can I take y'all back to 1994?"

It's a question that Ice Cube popped in the midst of his performance during last night's West Coast All-Stars Tour stop at Comerica Theatre. The near-sellout crowd -- which had been plenty rowdy all evening -- lost their shit after Cube's query and got even more cray cray during Snoop Dogg headlining set.

It also aptly summed up what the concert was all about: Taking it back to the old-school.

The mid-90s were the heyday of not only Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg, but also for fellow West Coast rap legend (and the tour's opener) Too Short. All three were in their prime and at their fiercest, dishing out anthems for the ghetto-fab crowd and ruling MTV. They were the scourge of white middle suburbanite parents everywhere (not to mention politicians), who got plenty of panic attacks over their teenagers blasting that "Snoop Diggy Dog" from the bedroom.

Too Short performs at Comerica Theatre on Friday, September 14.

In the intervening years since the pinnacle of the gangsta rap era, the erstwhile Calvin Broadus and O'Shea Jackson have softened their image considerably though appearances in family-friendly movies and whatnot, particularly Cube via his neutered performance in Are We There Yet?.

Too Short, on the other hand, never went the same route as his tourmates and maintained his ferociousness and over the decades. While the ginormous line of people waiting to get into Comerica after a lengthy pat-down by security (guess they learned from the Clubhouse Music Venue's mistake) kept me from catching all but the last few minutes of the Oakland rapper's set, what I witnessed was pretty pimp.

Ice Cube performs at Comerica Theatre on Friday, September 14.

He was nowhere near as fired up as Ice Cube, however. The "Don Mega" wound the clocks back to the days where he had a permanent scowl affixed to his mug, putting on a fierce performance featuring dope shit from N.W.A. and Westside Connection.

He rolled through songs like "Gangsta Nation" and "Straight Outta Compton" while backed up by his old Westside Connection partner Dub-C, who filled in for Dre on the N.W.A. songs and acted as Cube's hype man. The WC's resident DJ Crazy Toones was also on the turntables for the set, (Sadly, it looked like Mac 10 couldn't make it.)

The bass was jacked up to 11, as per the rappers' wishes, causing everyone's teeth to rattle as Cube dropped bombs on the mic.

"We want it loud, we want everybody to get their money's worth no doubt," he said.