Given that rapper Megan Thee Stallion has loomed large as one of hip-hop’s biggest stars in the time since her 2019 breakthrough hit “Hot Girl Summer,” it was a bit of a surprise that her concert Tuesday at Target Center was the first show of her first-ever tour as a headliner.

Not to say she doesn’t have experience working a crowd, as Megan has toured as the opener for Future and Dua Lipa and played pretty much every festival out there. But she wasn’t the main attraction — not until Tuesday night at the downtown Minneapolis basketball arena in front of a capacity crowd.

She opened with her recent single “Hiss,” her third Billboard Hot 100 chart topper and the first-ever solo female rap song to debut No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200. And from there, she worked in eight more songs — “Thot S—,” “Freak Nasty” and “Hot Girl” among them — along with an extended dance break in a mere 25 minutes.

With energy bursting from both the stage and the audience, that first act proved to be one of the most unabashedly fun and almost comically profane openings of an arena show in recent memory. Her large, but relatively simple, stage helped amp up the party energy. The circular stage had cutouts on either side for VIP sections filled with fist-pumping and twerking fans.

After a brief break to change costumes, Megan returned for a strong run of “Plan B,” “Cognac Queen,” “Big Ole Freak” and “Girls in the Hood” that ended with her most recent single, “Boa.” Both “Hiss” and “Boa” are from her upcoming third album, which seems to be snake-themed. (Serpent imagery also showed up on the big screens throughout the evening.)

But midway through the show, Megan slowed things down, almost to a crawl. She stopped rapping and began wandering aimlessly and chatting with the crowd. She goofed around with folks in the VIP sections in a manner that didn’t really play to the rest of the arena. At one point, she pulled said fans onto the stage to dance in a segment that somehow managed to feel chaotic and dull at the same time.

Things picked up considerably for her third act, which opened with “WAP,” her notoriously racy 2020 Cardi B collaboration that topped the charts around the world. After “Cash S—,” she stopped the action once again. Although this time it was because she needed help with her in-ear monitors and her playful banter with both the crowd and the blushing crew guys proved Megan Thee Stallion can be a real charmer when she wants to be.

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