A relatively new concert venue, the OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino has given both locals and tourists alike a fresh reason to visit Niagara Falls. After being ranked by Billboard as the #1 concert venue in Canada and Top 10 worldwide for venues with a 2,501 to 5,000 person capacity in 2025, its now made Niagara Falls a desired destination for artists going on tour. With Nelly booked to perform on a Saturday night, we decided to take the opportunity to spend a weekend in Niagara Falls and check out the new venue.

Coming from Mississauga and mostly reviewing concerts in Toronto, we’ve had plenty of missed opportunities to see Nelly perform live in recent years, as he helped organize and headlined the Hot In Herre Festival in 2023 at Downsview Park and returned to Budweiser Stage (now known as RBC Amphitheatre) on the Where The Party At Tour in 2025. While he’s not on a major headlining tour this year, Nelly has been performing at select music festivals and one-night-only events in 2026, coming off of headlining London, Ontario’s Rock The Park Festival a day prior to arriving in Niagara Falls. Most known for blending Hip-Hop and R&B with his smash hits in the early 2000s, and his evolution to blending his style of rap with Country and Pop music in the 2010s, Nelly has no shortage of hits he can rock a stage with even when he’s not out promoting new music.

We got to the OLG Stage just after doors opened to experience it for the first time. Crossing the bridge from Fallsview Casino to the concert venue, we found the merch booth on the main level, and several escalators to take us up to each level of seating. The venue felt like a modernized crossover between Toronto’s Massey Hall and former Budweiser Stage, having that amphitheatre scale while stacking the sections on top of each other in the indoor venue so that even the cheap seats weren’t too far away from the action. After getting a round of drinks and finding our seats, we’d take in a quick 20-minute DJ set by local artist DJ Recon to warm things up.

DJ Recon’s set had the crowd moving to plenty of Pop, Rap and R&B hits from the early 2000s, and he’d seamlessly blend each hit into the next. One highlight for me was when he took KRS-One’s “Sound Of Da Police” and put it over the beat from Missy Elliott’s “Work It.” A few minutes after his set, Nelly’s day-one tour DJ, DJ Trife, would start rocking the turntables with Nelly’s Derrty Entertainment logo gracing the jumbo screens. Not one to tease the crowd or test the energy levels before bringing out the headliner, DJ Trife would dive right into the action, quickly bringing out Nelly without any heads up to start the main event!

Having just done the Where The Party At Tour last year, Nelly started his set list performing that same Jagged Edge song he’s featured on. The energy in the building was turnt from the beginning, as Nelly dove into a medley of hits, performing “E.I.” in full, followed by his verse on “Shake Ya Tailfeather,” the hook from “Batter Up,” and a full performance of “Air Force Ones,” each song having clips from the music videos shown on the screen behind him. After hitting us with throwback after throwback, Nelly would take a moment to speak to the fans, getting everyone hyped as he was ready to make this a special night no matter which song or what version of him you first got put on to. On that note, he’d take it back to the year 2000 for the day-one fans.

Having already performed parts of his biggest hits off of his diamond-certified debut, Country Grammar, Nelly would quickly knock out the remaining two singles off of that album, next performing the title track with the beat flipping to Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” for him to rap the second verse over, bringing a ton of added energy to the song. He’d then take a second to acknowledge his hypeman, City Spud, reminding fans of his early imagery of wearing a bandaid under his eye to honour Spud while he was serving a 10-year prison sentence. City Spud would get to rap arguably the most famous verse of his career acapella, and those with sharp ears knew the next song Nelly would pull out would be the classic “Ride Wit Me.”

After getting the fans to join in singing the bridge to “Ride Wit Me,” Nelly would then jump ahead a few years in his discography to perform a few songs that have more of a Country style to them. I was admittedly unfamiliar with the songs in this segment, but the younger fans in the crowd were hyped and singing along as he kicked off the Country segment with 2013’s “Hey Porsche.” He’d follow up with a couple collaborations with the band Florida Georgia Line, including “Cruise” and “Lil Bit,” and would close out with the Jeremih-featuring “The Fix,” which older heads may recognize as an interpolation of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.”

Nelly would continue to jump between eras, doing parts of his Rick Ross collab “Here I Am,” the 2002 throwback “Pimp Juice,” the ’05 Paul Wall collab “Grillz,” and 2010’s “Move That Body.” He’d then run through a medley of hits by other artists, getting the crowd to sing along as DJ Trife played classic songs by Michael Jackson, Journey, and Hall & Oates, speaking to the diverse range of influences Nelly had on his own music. They’d continue on with more modern hits, including “All I Do Is Win” by T-Pain, “Low” by Flo-Rida just so Nelly could promote his Apple Bottoms clothing brand on the jumbo screens, and got the crowd shouting out lyrics to Lil Jon’s “Get Low” and DMX’s “Party Up.”

The DMX lyrics “up in here, up in here” made for a dope transition as Nelly finally got back to performing his own music, pulling out the 2002 classic “Hot In Herre.” He’d perform all 3 verses of the song, getting the ladies in the front row to shout lyrics into the mic, and had the whole building energized. Continuing on with that Nellyville album, he’d turn the lights down and get the entire crowd to light up their cell phones before performing the romantic Kelly Rowland collaboration, “Dilemma,” getting the ladies in the crowd to help sing Kelly’s parts of the song. With these being the biggest hits the Millennial fans know him for, Nelly decided to end the show with a song for his Gen Z fans, getting everyone to sing along to his 2010 hit “Just A Dream.” Just when the energy was at its highest, the show ended abruptly there, with the lights coming on and no chance at an encore.

Overall, Nelly’s performance reminded us of the diversity he’s been able to capture in his music. There would be moments where he’d be spitting acapella raps for the Hip-Hop heads, and others where he’d have the crowd singing along to Country anthems. He had both the club hits and the smooth, romantic vibes. Fans of all ages showed up for him, including parents with their young kids, who likely appreciated the 9:30 end time, as well as young adults who may have wanted to keep the party going, some being upset that the performance barely lasted one hour. For those who felt that it was too early to stop partying, Nelly would go on to host an after party at the infamous Sundowner strip club late into the night, easily switching from a relatively family-friendly event to an adults-only setting. Maybe he was saving “Tip Drill” for the right time and place.

Many may know Nelly as one of the best selling rappers of the highly competitive early 2000s era, dropping multi-platinum albums in a time when Jay-Z, Eminem, 50 Cent, Ludacris and DMX were all doing the same, but his live concert highlights his growth since that time, with his later hits resonating with newer fans, and his throwbacks being passed on to the kids of parents who grew up with them. While he didn’t do much diving into the deep album cuts for the diehard fans, with most songs on the setlist being hit singles with music videos to play on the jumbo screens, Nelly still reminded the fans from each generation why they fell in love with his music in the first place, and was definitely humble and appreciative of everyone who came out to see him.

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