Show Review: Comical queen Lee Young-ji humours crowd with comedy chops

Without a doubt, Lee Young-ji is the very star of her show. The 21-year-old rapper held the Singapore leg of her Asia tour at Capitol Theatre yesterday (20 Oct).

As she rode through the two-hour setlist spitting out rap verses, her personality also shone through with her innate comedy chops.

Here are four highlights from Lee’s first concert in Singapore.

1. Wicked humour

Lee is widely known for her bubbly yet savage personality that commands attention from the audience. And we’ve seen that through her popular YouTube series No Prepare.

Lee cracked jokes throughout the show, which left the audience bursting into waves of laughter.

At one point, she was complimenting the interior architecture of the Capitol Theatre, where the concert was held since it was decorated with carvings of Greek mythology. She said, “If I had been living in ancient Greece, I would be up on the podium too because of how many competitions I have competed in”.

She’s comical even when introducing her songs, like Freesia (2022), a song written about the feeling of being rejected. She added, “Feelings are gone, love is gone, but this song exists and so does money.”

We love that she’s pragmatic like that.

2. Spotlight on dance

Those familiar with dance competitions would know of Team Amazon. That night, the dancers who performed alongside Lee were stars themselves too.

The girls competed in Street Dance Girls Fighter (2021), a spin-off programme of Street Woman Fighter (2021).

They performed two choreographed pieces, Maty Noyes’s London (2017) and Eva Simon’s Guaya (2017).

The girls were Lee’s backup dancers who backed her choreography throughout the show. Lee herself already did a stunning job at bringing the heat, but Team Amazon made her performance fire.

3. Performed her feature tracks

Not only did Lee perform songs she released herself, but she also performed snippets of tracks that she featured.

She performed a medley of Jeon So-yeon’s Is this bad b***** number? (2021), which she featured alongside Bibi. And Seventeen sub-unit BSS’ Fighting (2023), which got the crowd jumping on their feet.

Smoke (2023), the earworm currently looping through everyone’s playlist, was also a track she featured in. It was specially produced for the second season of Street Woman Fighter.

Read more: Lee Young-ji is the newest global ambassador for Coach

To top it all off, she also danced the choreography by dancer Bada Lee, which was popularised by the show.

4. Multilingual queen

Not only did she speak in Korean, she also attempted to converse with fans in English.

She also performed a self-written song sung totally in English, highlighting the doubts she has on whether her partner truly likes her instead of someone smaller (since Young-ji is pretty tall herself).

Not only that, she sang a cover of homegrown singer-songwriter JJ Lin’s Twilight (2015) as she dons on the iconic “I Love SG (Singapore)” t-shirt, a must-have for every tourist on the sunny island.