Wale and Smino’s third and last Texas date on the Everything Is A Lot tour landed at South Side Ballroom, a different building and a different crowd than the sold-out Stubb’s night in Austin. Dallas did what Dallas does. Packed. Loud. Nobody sitting a song out if they could help it.
The tour title is also the title of Wale’s new album, his eighth and his first under Def Jam after leaving MMG. For Smino, the run is a first as co-headliner. Two career markers on one bill. South Side is a bigger box than Stubb’s, and the night felt like it: more concrete, more volume, the same catalog people came to yell.
They ran the album and the ones the floor already knew. That is the assignment on a co-headline like this — new material that has to hold next to the songs that built the rooms. In Austin, Wale leaned on the new record and it held. Dallas wanted that and the shout-alongs. The pair gave both.
South Side lets out onto a parking lot and a city that does not apologize for being loud. The Texas run closed here. If the Austin date was the one that proved the album live, Dallas was the one that proved the tour could still fill a room after the first stop. The pictures are in the gallery.
A co-headline lives or dies on whether both names still feel like a show when the other one is offstage. South Side is big enough to expose a passenger. Neither man played passenger. The floor stayed on its feet.
Dallas crowds will tell you they are the most lit stop on a tour. Sometimes that is flattery. Sometimes the building is actually louder than Austin. This one was loud. The album cuts had to fight the shout-alongs, and they did not lose.
The Texas run ending here is a clean close. Stubb’s proved the record. South Side proved the tour still had a city left in it.
