If you have logged into Twitter over the past seven days, chances are high that you have spotted the #777Tour hashtag pop up a time or two. Often followed by #HTCrihanna and #unapologetic, the ‘777’ Tour is a high-budget worldwide promotion of Rihanna‘s seventh studio album ‘Unapologetic‘. Everyone’s favourite Good Girl Gone Bad has, in fact, set out to perform 7 shows in 7 countries over 7 days: Mexico City, Toronto, Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, last night’s penultimate stop in London, and tonight…New York City.
Having followed Rihanna’s HTC-sponsored tweets since the beginning, I was honoured to be one of a handful of press invited to the ‘secret’ show yesterday at The Forum in Kentish Town. With an audience capacity at least 10 times smaller than a typical show, the fan-fevered electricity of the event was hugely contagious. Decorated with nothing more than a band and a triptych of screens, Rihanna spent the best part of an hour gyrating and hypnotizing us with songs that have been topping the charts for the past seven years. Peppering in a few of her soon-to-be hits – Presh Off The Runway and Diamonds – there was not an untapped foot in the house.