Opinions Editor

Most Bakersfield residents pledge: “there’s nothing to do here,” “nothing exciting comes to Bakersfield” and “why does all the cool stuff happen everywhere but here?”

CSU Bakersfield finally stepped to the forefront of booking great musicians.

With schools like UC San Diego and its booking of Schoolboy Q or USC’s booking of Atlanta’s current trap kings Migos,

CSUB stepped up its game and brought us star R&B/Rap artist Wale.

Last year’s Runner Nights, brought us singer Alessia Cara, who brought the heat with vocals that killed and a performance still talked about by students, but booking Wale as the spring Runner Nights performer unleashed a new monster.

This monster has dreads, wears sunglasses indoors and provides soulful lyrics and banger beats that gave CSUB students enough rhythm to shake their asses, fists and heads.

As an avid listener of rap and trap, I was excited to hear that a well-known rapper was coming to Bakersfield, and of all places in the community, CSUB.

Admittedly, I was not as familiar with his music so I did my research.

Most of you who complained that you didn’t know who he was, should’ve done your research.

After downloading his past few albums, I searched for the best. The ones I knew he would play.

And those of us who frequent concerts know that a big part of the atmosphere is knowing the songs, so when the artist points the mic at the audience, they’re ready to take over.

The sad part of this concert was that 50 percent of the time poor Wale was pointing the mic to us and we just left him hanging.

CSUB barely knew any of his songs.

But that did not stop people like me from jumping three feet in the air, pumping everyone up around me, all while Snapchatting the whole concert.

I didn’t know most of his songs, but I continued to hype him up and yell profanities to make sure he wasn’t playing to a dead crowd.

He came out to “Bait” and played crowd favorites like “Lotus Flower Bomb” and “Ambition,” which rattled the crowd and my ear drums.

 The morning of the concert, I found out that Wale had just released his new album “Shine” and immediately started to memorize the songs, just in case he premiered them live.

And he did.

The Wale concert was more than a concert, though.

It was a sign to the community that we are capable of so much more.

If you missed the concert, you missed hundreds of people enjoying themselves and my drunk ass shouting along to Wale and his hype man.

Overall, the concert was great.

It was especially better than all the stupid whale jokes I heard.

But even though I only came in time for Wale performance, I still left shell-shocked and ready for more.

If you’re skeptical of going to the concert next time for whatever reason, just go.

If you don’t go, you’ll never know the possibilities of the night.

I gave the concert four out of five whales.