LIVE: ASHANTI with RIAH – Perth | Boorloo, 9 November 2026

LIVE: ASHANTI with RIAH – Perth | Boorloo, 9 November 2026
Riverside Theatre, Perth, Western Australia
Reviewed by Rachel Finucane
Photography by Stu McKay

Picture rocking with Grammy-winning R&B legend Ashanti (as her international tour Rock Wit U suggested) and you’d have been forgiven for envisioning smoky club corners and disposable cameras doing the rounds. Definitely more Astor Theatre vibes, or Metropolis Fremantle if you were really committed to the vintage party fantasy. That vision only deepened given that Ashanti travelled with her official DJ, DJ City (a man with the most infectious personality in the room and an equally passionate relationship with the annoying buzzer sound, deployed with the frequency and confidence of someone who had never once been told no). Or, if you were still deep in your Scooby schoolyard phase and firmly on the wrong side of the age limit, maybe Riverside Theatre would have done the trick; the unlikely, yet entirely unavoidable venue that hosted the night’s affair when the tour pin-dropped in Australia, kicking off in Perth on Monday, November 9. It made for an intimate show, certainly. Raise of hands, though, if you walked in absolutely convinced there would be a pit.

Here’s the thing: Ashanti’s last official album dropped over a decade ago (Braveheart, 2014). Put the defibrillator down. She’s since pledged, in full Taylor’s Version energy, to re-record her self-titled debut, so the legacy is very much in active renovation. By any measure, though, we’d file her squarely under the club tribute section, not because she’s a one-hit wonder, but because we’d much rather have felt the dancefloor rattling beneath us than watched a quarter of the crowd treat the whole thing like a sit-down dinner. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

It all started with opener RIAH, fresh out of high school and already acting as if she’d skipped straight past the learning curve. She traded team spirit for celebrating her roots, an Aboriginal flag draped over her DJ’s booth with quiet pride (though she’d be the first to tell you she’s a bit of everything). Her approach to warming up a crowd was a familiar one: lead with a cover, ease into originals, then take a detour into Motherslove, a heartfelt tribute to mothers everywhere and to anyone who’d had the foresight to bring theirs along as their plus-one for the evening. The only snag was that, with half the house lights still blazing, proceedings teetered dangerously close to talent-quest territory, which felt deeply unfair on vocals that were genuinely there to be noticed.

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The gap between sets stretched longer than expected, easily long enough to have smuggled an entire second act into the proceedings. But remember DJ City? He was not about to let the energy flatline on his watch, blasting the R&B cuts you still have embarrassingly committed choreography to, including the moment he instructed the crowd to point at an actual wall for Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz’s Get Low. They did it. Of course they did.

Then Ashanti arrived, and immediately spotlighted the song that gave the whole tour its name: Rock Wit U (Awww Baby). And if you caught the Michael Jackson shot on the screen behind her, yes. You saw what you thought you saw. She was draped in an overabundance of fur throughout the evening, but it’s hard to picture Ashanti without her bandanas (especially for anyone who logged serious hours with John Tucker Must Die), and sure enough, various heads in the audience were sporting the same accessory in solidarity. That wasn’t the only pop of colour on offer either; sparklers blazed for Rain on Me (sensing a theme with this crew, clearly also literal), there was seductive chair choreography for Baby, and video appearances from Fat Joe and Ja Rule that had all the energy of listening to one side of a FaceTime call and hoping you could catch them if you phone back.

What was genuinely gorgeous was Ashanti’s habit of letting the music drop away entirely so her vocals could do the talking, slipping into acapella mode with the kind of effortlessness that made you wish she’d done it more. There were moments, admittedly, where a live band would have elevated things further, but the gaps were filled with crowd warmth and Ashanti herself, who chatted about the very specific chaos of having a husband whose birthday falls on Halloween (It’s Getting Hot in Herre, because obviously her husband is Nelly). This year’s solution: a spooky birthday party in Las Vegas while on tour. And their two-year-old? Watched Bluey on the way to Australia, as is tradition, law, and simply what you do.

Ultimately, the whole night felt like a countdown to Foolish; the two-time platinum moment where Ashanti rattled off a list of achievements with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had earned every single one, Guinness World Records and Hollywood Walk of Fame star included. She closed the show in a gorgeous lookback, the original music video rolling behind her while the entire audience was finally, undeniably, on their feet. Because sure, Riverside Theatre isn’t exactly the first venue that comes to mind for an R&B icon, but a party’s a party, regardless of where you throw it.

Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries