Aminé’s “Tour de Dance” on Sept. 20 at Cal Coast Open Air Theatre was not your typical rap concert.

Between his immersive stage set-up, dedication to interacting with fans and commitment to spreading love, the concert transformed his fan base into a community, united by their passion for his music.

Aminé, or Adam Aminé Daniel, is an American rapper and singer-songwriter from Portland, OR. While the majority of his music consists of alternative hip-hop and rap, his more recent tracks have taken a turn toward the house genre. Aminé released his first album in 2017, and his most recent album released in May.

The night started with Lido, a DJ featured on Aminé’s newest album. Lido spun tracks under the stage’s colored, strobing lights as people started to file into the venue.

When MadisonLST, another DJ, took to the stage asking if the crowd was ready for Aminé, cheers roared from the audience.

When the formation of screens on stage started playing a countdown, the cheers grew even louder.

The concert opened with a monologue from a female voice, emulating Siri or an Amazon Alexa, asking the crowd questions about their life and how they felt about their current emotional state. 

It was then that Aminé ran on stage, already dancing and jumping up and down in his neon yellow shirt, neon pink shorts and colorful shoes.

“Vacay,” an upbeat, house-influenced beat, was the first song of the night, followed by “13MOS,” an upbeat, but lyrically introspective song of Aminé’s.

“When I say ‘you’re beautiful,’ you say ‘I know’,” Aminé shouted to the crowd.

This call and response went on throughout the night, keeping the energy and warmth in the audience at a high.

“I’ve seen (Aminé) live a couple times, but he’s also – he’s Habesha, like he’s Ethiopian so I want to support Ethiopian artists,” said Zeyada Negasi, a third-year marketing major at San Diego State University.

“It’s nice to see somebody in the music industry kind of representing us,” Negasi said.

Aminé went on to perform songs such as “Riri,” “Woodlawn,” “RATCHET SATURN GIRL” and two songs from his collaborative album with Kaytranada titled “Kaytraminé.”

Another monologue from the robot-like female voice started to play, this time mimicking the airplane safety speech people usually hear when flying.

“Things are about to get bumpy,” the female voice said.

Aminé then performed “Arc de Triomphe” as visuals of Paris monuments rolled by on the screens behind him.

The artist frequently cut the music to let the audience sing lines, making their voices fill the air before the booming speakers came back on.

Aminé then introduced his tour pants, a special pair of camouflage pants that he added a patch onto for every city he performed in.

“We’ve been doing it for 8 years on every tour,” Aminé told the audience.

When Aminé announced he would bring someone on the stage to sign the pants, the audience went wild.

After choosing a female fan in the front row, Aminé told her to write down whatever “brings (her) sunshine” on the pants, a nod to his latest album, “13 Months of Sunshine.”

When the female fan told Aminé it was the birthday of her sister in the crowd, Aminé had the whole audience sing happy birthday to her.

Despite the large crowd gathered around the stage, the moment added a deeply personal touch to the show and created a sense of community between fans.

“I grew up listening to (Aminé), I have family-friends who knew him from college before he dropped out, so I’ve been listening to him for a minute,” said Livana Berhe, a third-year general business major at SDSU.

“I really like how experimental he is because I’ve noticed a lot of rappers aren’t as experimental,” Berhe said.

As MadisonLST repeatedly shouted “bounce,” Aminé performed hits such as “BLACKJACK,” “Burden,” “Familiar,” “Sage Time,” “REDMERCEDES” and “SHINE” as he led the crowd in waving their hands together.

The audience got hyped up when the signature beat of “REEL IT IN” played, as the track is one of the artist’s more widely recognized songs.

For the final song of the night, Aminé asked the crowd to put up their phone flashlights as he performed “Caroline,” one of his biggest hits that went viral on social media and put him on the map.

Jossilyn Bachman and Jason Simms, a couple from Escondido, CA, said they have listened to Aminé for around seven to eight years.

“I was a fan of him before ‘Caroline,’ before his big song blew up,” said Simms.

Bachman and Simms said that with the tickets being so affordable and the concert being at one of their favorite venues, they knew without a doubt that they were going to make a date night out of the occasion.

“The more recent (album) was kind of like – I don’t know – down to earth in a way, and was very personal, and he’s also just made party albums and things like that,” said Simms. “So it’s a very good mix. It feels like whatever mood you’re feeling, if you want to listen to him, you can.”

After Aminé held up a heart with his hands and ran off stage, the word “ENCORE?” glowed across the screens and audiences screamed excitedly until Aminé came running back out.

“Make some noise for yourselves tonight!” Aminé shouted as he took concert-goers on one more trip to France with a second performance of “Arc de Triomphe”. 

After Aminé playfully told the audience that the show really was finished, attendees made their way up the stairs of Cal Coast, gushing over the exciting night with a buzzing energy surrounding them.