With colored lights shining, people’s hands in the air wearing their lettuce necklaces, a floor seat filled crowd prepared to welcome Ja Rule to the Convocation Center.

The hip-hop artist, along with Benzino and Kelly Rowland, performed their hits Wednesday night.

Other originally scheduled artists Charli Baltimore and Solange did not perform.

-“I love Ja Rule,” Latisha Stureivant said. “He’s the only one I wanted to see.”

Benzino opened the show around 8 p.m., a half an hour after the originally scheduled time.

He talked about how he was for peace and against violence and the crowd cheered in support.

He then called for girls in the audience, to come on stage for his song, “Boottee.”

“It was so cool,” said Danielle Hill, a junior psychology major. “It felt like I was in a video.”

After Benzino’s performance, chords of “Dilemma,” Rowland’s duet with rap artist Nelly, blasted from the speakers.

Rowland, wearing an NIU visor and red Huskie shirt, finished the song and jumped into her latest single, “Stole.”

-In honor of Valentine’s Day, she said she hoped to find her true love at Northern Illinois and sang her other single, “(Love Lives in) Strange Places.”

She ended her performance by tossing her visor into the middle of the crowd and sang her soon-to-be-released single “Can’t Nobody.”

Twenty-five minutes after Rowland’s performance, the main act strutted onto stage performing his breakout hit “Holla Holla.”

Afterward, he went on a roll and sang seven of his hits, including “Livin’ It Up,” “Down Ass Bitch,” “Where Would I Be” and “Between Me and You.”

Most of these songs featured other artists that were not there to perform, so audience members filled in the missing vocals.

“It was good because we got to sing with him,” said Ginger Bryngelson, a freshman physics major. “It was a good way to get the audience involved.”

Ja Rule told the audience that since they paid money to get in, they owned the place. The crowd screamed as heads began bopping up and down even more.

He then busted in to “Ain’t that Funny,” but halfway through he stopped and said it wasn’t the way he did his performances. So he took his shirt off.

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“I came to check him out,” said Candy Lewis, holding up her framed picture of Ja Rule. “I mean, look at him.”

Ja Rule ended his performances with two songs, both of which originally were sung with artist Ashanti, “Always on Time” and “Mesmerize.”

“Love is pain and I love y’all,” he said as he left.

Joe Coots, Convo Center marketing director, said he estimated about 2,800 to 3,000 people came to the show.

“It was all right,” Coots said. “It seemed like everyone had fun.”

He said he did not know why the other scheduled artists, Baltimore and Solange did not come and said he was informed of the change an hour before to the show.

“I don’t know if they got sick or what,” Coots said.

Lt. Matt Kiederlen of University Police said no major problems occurred in terms of crowd control.

He did say that a couple of people were ejected from the show because of contraband and others for underage consumption.