Review: Post Malone fires up Minneapolis crowd with fireworks and endless pop hits

Post Malone had a microphone in one hand and a red Solo cup (presumably filled with beer) in the other. He sported a Texas-worthy belt buckle on his tight jeans, a blue-and-white striped Western shirt on his back, tattoos all over his face and sparkling grillz on his teeth. He took the stage at U.S. Bank Stadium on Tuesday night to declare that he’s a Big Star headlining the Big Ass Stadium Tour.

But what is he? Is he country? Hip-hop? Pop? Rock? What?

All of the above and massively popular. He drew about 50,000 people to experience him and too-short sets by fast-rising country hero Jelly Roll and quirky Americana Grammy winner Sierra Ferrell. All three have disparate and diverse styles that somehow converge in a Venn diagram that says country music. It added up to an entertaining, eclectic, crowd-pleasing show that demonstrated that, in concert, personality matters as much as songs.

Like Beyoncé, aka Cowboy Carter, Posty, as his fans call him, grew up in Texas but only recently embraced country music during a hit-filled, genre-fluid career. But he’s not one to stay in his lane.

The bearded dude, who turns 30 on July 4, represents American pop music for the last decade. He’s a catchy, chameleonic mixture of pop, trap, hip-hop, country, folk, rock, R&B and Auto-Tune.

He’s displaced Carlos Santana as music’s most willing collaborator, having recorded with Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Morgan Wallen, the Weeknd, Doja Cat, Justin Bieber, 21 Savage, Blake Shelton, Ozzy Osbourne, SZA, Lainey Wilson, Nicki Minaj, Noah Kahan, Chris Stapleton, Travis Scott, Swae Lee and Dolly Parton, among others.

Posty is not gifted on guitar or vocals (which are often Auto-Tuned to the point that he eschews his natural voice). He’s neither Hollywood handsome nor coolly swag. He’s just kind of a suburban everyman, rootless and restless and ready to party.

True to his carefree persona, he once explained his songwriting process to podcast poobah Joe Rogan, saying “eight Bud Lights and a tiny bit of shrooms,” as in psychedelic mushrooms.

Somehow, it all works. Posty has scored five No. 1 songs, and 13 of his tracks have been heard more than 1 billion times on Spotify. This year, he was featured in two Super Bowl commercials, something that household names like Martha Stewart, Matthew McConaughey and Tom Brady did. He’s got promotion deals with Bud Light, Oreo, Crocs, Doritos and Raising Cane’s.

Judging by his U.S. Bank Stadium concert, Posty might have a sponsorship arrangement with a fireworks company because they exploded during three of the first four numbers along with flamethrowers (and throughout much of his set). There was plenty of stage fog, too, and very dim lights. It’s a good thing he wore that striped shirt, which made it easier to spot him onstage as he stalked and strutted down a T-shaped runway, which had its own built-in flames.

A chain-smoker onstage like comic Dave Chappelle (with a pack of cigs in his back pocket), Posty devoted more than one-third of Tuesday’s meandering two-hour set to material from his first foray into country, 2024’s “F-1 Trillion,” which features a who’s who in Nashville.

“M-E-X-I-C-O” was a bouncy hoedown complete with fiddle and, of course, fireworks. “What Don’t Belong to Me” was breezy country/R&B featuring his backup singers. The double shot of “Finer Things,” a twanged-up strut, and “Pour Me a Drink,” a generic, good-time country ditty, played perfectly in a stadium.

Posty even threw in a new Wallen song, “I Ain’t Comin’ Back,” on which Posty is featured but that he’s only sung twice before in concert. So, he warned, if he messes up the words “you can’t make fun of me on the internet.”

Posty didn’t have much to say except that he was thankful to be on his first stadium tour and that his name is Austin Richard Post. He often addressed the crowd as “ladies and gentlemen” before dropping endless expletives.

He introduced “I Fall Apart” about having his heart broken; too bad the vocals on this heart-wrencher were Auto-Tuned and the song was punctuated unnecessarily by fireworks that the power ballad didn’t need.

Later Posty explained he was obsessed with shapes, and he wrote a song about his favorite shape, trapezoids. Then he sang “Circles,” his easy, breezy 2019 pop chart-topper that sounded just fine minus the Auto-Tune. Equally appealing was “Feeling Whitney,” a pretty solo acoustic guitar folk song with a long held note and a touch of falsetto.

The high point, though, for the crowd had to be the explosively hypnotic “Rockstar,” during which pyro flared up from all over the stadium including the speaker towers, followed by the singalong “I Had Some Help,” Posty’s 2024’s pop blockbuster with Wallen.

During his set, Posty shared the stage with Jelly Roll on “Losers,” an ode to outcasts and sinners that turned into one of Posty’s highlights because of their heartfelt harmonizing and post-song hug. Later, Ferrell joined him on the pedal steel guitar-drenched, honky-tonk tearjerker “Never Love You Again,” two tracks from “F-1 Trillion.”

Frankly, those two talented ascending stars deserved more stage time in their opening sets.

Even though he performed for a fleeting 56 minutes, Jelly Roll, 40, couldn’t be denied. He was such a force of personality who seemed genuinely grateful for his rise to stardom after being a drug-dealing ex-convict who thought he’d die young.

His mix of heavy metal, hip-hop, country, gospel and eclectic covers (John Denver, Nickelback, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Miley Cyrus) as well as his preaching about self-worth connected with the crowd, especially on his recent country hit “I Am Not Okay” delivered with conviction and heart. His wearing a Timberwolves cap and saying he was pulling for the team in Game 1 on this night seemed legit; it didn’t hurt that some of his bandmates were sporting Vikings, Wild and Frost gear.

In her too-quick half-hour, Ferrell — a 36-year-old look-at-me breath of fresh air from West Virginia in a pink, plumed cowgirl hat and short-and-long bustle dress — came across as fierce, refreshing and authentically Appalachian. As she covered songs by country vets Kris Kristofferson and John Anderson and did a few of her own tunes, she demonstrated her Grammy-winning bona fides (she won four of them this year) as a singer, guitarist and fiddler, especially on her dark and dramatic closer “Fox Hunt.”

Ferrell and Jelly Roll proved that you can thrill a crowd without flames and fireworks.