keshi Brings ‘Requiem’ Home to the Kia Forum

There is something strange about hearing a song you used to play alone through headphones suddenly sung back by thousands of people around you.

That feeling followed keshi throughout his Aug. 11 stop at the Kia Forum, where more than 10,000 fans packed the arena for the Requiem World Tour. Roy Blair and starfall opened the night before keshi took the stage for a set that pulled from nearly every era of his career.

For an artist who began uploading self-produced songs to SoundCloud while working as a nurse, the scale of the night was hard to ignore. Songs like “like i need u,” “2 soon” and “drunk” once belonged to a much smaller version of keshi, but inside the Forum they no longer sounded small at all.

The show opened with “Amen,” the first track from Requiem. Keshi had actually written the song with moments like this in mind. While making the album, he said he wanted to stop creating songs first and figuring out how to adapt them for concerts later. Instead, Requiem was built knowing that stages like Madison Square Garden and the Kia Forum were waiting.

That bigger sound did not completely replace what made people connect with him in the first place. The set moved between Requiem tracks like “Say,” “Soft Spot” and “Texas” and older favorites from THE REAPER, always and GABRIEL. Hearing “LIMBO” or “UNDERSTAND” inside an arena made sense. Hearing thousands of people sing “like i need u” together felt a little more surreal.

That connection with the crowd became one of the best parts of the night. During “drunk,” Los Angeles apparently had something to prove. Keshi calls the city his second home, and the Forum crowd ended up beating Toronto for the loudest singalong of the song, according to coverage from the show.

There was also something brand new to scream along to.

“WANTCHU” had officially been released only three days before the concert on Aug. 8, but at the Forum it already felt familiar. The song landed midway through the set between “beside you” and “Soft Spot,” giving fans one of their first chances to hear the newly released track live in Los Angeles.

Requiem itself came from a much heavier place. Keshi named the album after a friend and collaborator who passed away, an experience he has said changed the way he thought about time and the people around him. That loss sits behind an album that sounds noticeably bigger than his earlier work, but still carries the same loneliness and uncertainty that have followed his music from the beginning.

By the final stretch, the show had moved through “UNDERSTAND,” “drunk,” “TOUCH,” “2 soon,” “Bodies” and “Euphoria” before keshi returned for “Id” as the encore. It was a setlist that made room for the artist he is now without forgetting the music that got him there.

For fans who found keshi during late-night study sessions, long drives home or some unfortunately specific heartbreak, seeing those songs fill the Kia Forum felt like watching something private become communal.

The music was still personal. There were just 10,000 other people singing along now.