Megan Thee Stallion brings swagger and spice to LCA in first Detroit headlining show

She may be just three shows into her first-ever headlining tour, but Megan Thee Stallion looked all the part of a seasoned star onstage Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena.

Five years after breaking big with “Hot Girl Summer,” the Grammy-winning rapper has embarked on a transatlantic arena tour of that same name, with Detroit an early stop on the run.

A sellout crowd was there to greet the 29-year-old Houston hitmaker for what was a girls-night-out kind of affair, with many fans arriving at LCA in their own variations of the curvaceous body suits and flesh-baring monokinis Megan Thee Stallion would embrace onstage.

It was a night writhing with snake imagery, sexual bravado and near-nonstop booty shaking. The show was as much about Megan’s confident, assertive presence as it was her ever-growing repertoire of kinky hits — a salvo that started Saturday with her latest chart-topper, “Hiss,” and its barrage of cleverly barbed celebrity shade.

Joined by eight dancers who at one point joined the star for a synchronized twerking number, Megan Thee Stallion kept the pace upbeat and the downtime minimal. The only extended pause for breath came with a mid-show segment in which she invited groups of excited fans — her Hotties — onto the stage for their own personalized dancing exhibitions.

Amid the extravagant raunchiness that often bordered on camp, that was a touch of come-one, come-all togetherness and accessibility, much like the assorted selfies she snapped on audience members’ mobile phones throughout the night.

As a rapper, Megan Thee Stallion is formidable — she built a name via her electrifying freestyles, after all — and her rapid-fire rhymes accentuated songs such as “Sex Talk,” “Kitty Kat” and “Stalli.” Elsewhere, numbers like “Thot S---” rode high on catchy hooks, with the likes of “Big Ole Freak” becoming arena-wide chant-alongs and “BOA” serving up her distinctive brand of side-eye.

After reported technical glitches on the tour’s opening nights, Saturday’s mix was crisp and full, and the star’s mouth-twisting vowels and spicy wordplay were only occasionally lost in the sonic boom.

Megan Thee Stallion’s trademark, defiant swagger did give way to a little vulnerability with the recent single exploring her battles with depression, “Cobra,” which wrapped up the concert’s opening segment.

“Wanna Be,” with guest Glorilla, and the 2020 Cardi B smash “WAP” helped the show start a crescendo that finished with the biggest hit of Megan’s career, the Beyoncé-featuring “Savage.”

For all the night’s energy — and props to the likable Megan, that rarely flagged — the show threatened to become a monotonous affair, offering few variations in sound, movement or expression. At a crisp 85 minutes, it clocked out probably exactly when it needed to.

Rising rapper Glorilla had kicked off the evening with a 45-minute set of Memphis-fueled hip-hop and her own brand of self-empowerment.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Megan Thee Stallion: Swagger and spice in first Detroit headlining show