In spinning a few tunes from a laptop before kicking off her set, Haviah Mighty played a snippet of Kendrick Lamar's "BLOOD." in which a voice asks, "Is it wickedness? Is it weakness?" It was more of the former on display for the Brampton-bred artist's 40-minute slot, in which she was a one-woman show playing the role of DJ, MC and vocalist.
It might have seemed like it was too much to juggle in the early going, as she fiddled with pitch and speed controls for a remix of Young Thug's "With That," not drawing near as much reaction as when she came out from behind the boards to let the beat run and deliver her verses with laser-like focus, rarely even blinking as each word was delivered forcefully.
In sensing she could take both her own performance and the crowd's energy to higher heights, Haviah leapt to the floor of the venue to perform the title track of her Flower City project, moving around a circle of onlookers that were now awake and found themselves enraptured by her technical precision and a presence that was, yes, undeniably mighty.
"I don't know where the energy for the rest of the set is going to come from," she said upon returning to the stage, but finding it wasn't a problem. During "Westside" she hammed it up for the horde of Snapchatters at the front without missing a word, while a back-to-back tandem of "Pull Up" and "Ignorant" saw her blow the brakes clean off, returning to the venue's floor for some call-and-response with the crowd and her Sorority crewmates.
It might have seemed like it was too much to juggle in the early going, as she fiddled with pitch and speed controls for a remix of Young Thug's "With That," not drawing near as much reaction as when she came out from behind the boards to let the beat run and deliver her verses with laser-like focus, rarely even blinking as each word was delivered forcefully.
In sensing she could take both her own performance and the crowd's energy to higher heights, Haviah leapt to the floor of the venue to perform the title track of her Flower City project, moving around a circle of onlookers that were now awake and found themselves enraptured by her technical precision and a presence that was, yes, undeniably mighty.
"I don't know where the energy for the rest of the set is going to come from," she said upon returning to the stage, but finding it wasn't a problem. During "Westside" she hammed it up for the horde of Snapchatters at the front without missing a word, while a back-to-back tandem of "Pull Up" and "Ignorant" saw her blow the brakes clean off, returning to the venue's floor for some call-and-response with the crowd and her Sorority crewmates.