REVIEW | RNB SUMMER BALL — A NOSTALGIC NIGHT FT TLC, JODECI AND BLACKSTREET

On A warm Fri­day, 19^th June, at the infam­ous O2 Arena for the RnB Sum­mer Ball 2026 presen­ted by TCO with an audi­ence mainly filled with 70s & 80s babies, often dubbed the grown and sexy gen­er­a­tion. The age group that, before Spo­ti­fy playl­ists, would make RnB Slow Jam mix­tapes. Made up of our favour­ite down­tempo cuts from the early to mid 90s

Many dub this the golden era of the slow jams, fea­tur­ing time­less cuts that still get played in slow jam selec­tions around the world to this day. If you were a top-notch slow jams select­or, the track­list would abso­lutely include at least one Black­street, Jodeci & TLC track, which high­lighted what it meant to many of us in attend­ance to see these artists and hear these clas­sic songs live and sound­ing amazing.

Tonight was spe­cial. The warm-up DJs (DJ Silk and Frisky DJ) knew the assign­ment and spun count­less jams from this era to have us all in our feels, singing along like we were in front of the bath­room mir­ror with our hair brush.

This was my era, and my era stepped out look­ing fly tonight and excited for the arrival of Black­street (sans founders Teddy Riley & Dave Hol­lister) hit­ting you right in the 90s nos­tal­gia glands. In sequinned match­ing suits. The group ran through the hits from their first two albums. Hand­ing out some very expens­ive-look­ing roses to some lucky ladies in the audi­ence dur­ing a seduct­ive rendi­tion of “Before I Let You Go”

The crowd lit up for clas­sics like “Don’t Leave Me” and “Booti Call” before leav­ing the crowd on a high note with “No Diggity”

Up next was an Icon­ic per­form­ance from TLC. Both women, T‑Boz and Chilli, still look incred­ible and like they haven’t aged a day since the 90s. The ladies meant busi­ness when they pulled up with a DJ, back­ing dan­cers and a full live band with a horn section.

I genu­inely teared up dur­ing the per­form­ance of “ Unpretty, “ con­sid­er­ing how rel­ev­ant the mes­sage is today; it’s like T Boz hopped in a time machine to 2026 when she wrote it.

Floor­less per­form­ances of “Creep” and “No Scrubs”, com­plete with full dance routines, were sure to evoke memor­ies from the late 90’s

TLC ran through the hits from their first three albums, mak­ing subtle updates where needed. See­ing the ladies keep up the intense dance routines showed their com­mit­ment to put­ting on a show for the people.  Clos­ing with a fant­ast­ic rendi­tion of “Water­falls”, includ­ing a Lisa Left Eye trib­ute. Not only did this feel like a head­line performance.

TLC could have rocked this event solo, and when they fin­ished, you were left feel­ing like one hour wasn’t long enough and a few clas­sic songs were miss­ing from the set. I was feel­ing like I def­in­itely wanted to see them again.

Jodeci, the group that brought you the album “Diary Of A Mad Band”, lit­er­ally came onstage with a mad band …of incred­ible musi­cians hungry to show every­one in attend­ance what a head­line set soun­ded like.
This sound, with the mix of three tal­en­ted high-energy per­formers onstage, made the songs sound Stadium-Sized!

Jodeci (K‑CI, JoJo and Mr Dalv­in) took us to church with an epic rendi­tion of “Forever My Lady”, stretch­ing the songs out with fant­ast­ic musi­cian­ship, giv­ing us music that would rival Prince and the Revolu­tion in their prime. I was fully in my feel­ings and thank­fully with my Wife to share the love lol. One par­tic­u­lar high­light of the night was Jodeci’s per­form­ance of “Feen­in’” which was gen­er­a­tion­al. They under­stood the assign­ment. I genu­inely feel bad for the gen­er­a­tion that didn’t grow up when this music was released. It just hits different.

The thing about see­ing these artists for the most part, look­ing so well and pre­serving the sound so bril­liantly, is lit­er­ally the closest you can get to going back to the 90s in a Time Machine. This was almost per­fec­tion. What a fant­ast­ic night of Music!

Thank you, TCO, Black­street, TLC, Jodeci, The crowd and event staff.

9.5/10

Photo Cred­it: Jason Miller