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Pitbull at Co-op Live, Manchester – please, don’t stop the party

We came because it's silly but we stayed because it's GOOD

Daisy Jackson - 9th June 2025

How bizarre it must be to be Pitbull. This is a man with, by all accounts, a pretty successful music career – but how bizarre for his trajectory to kick up so sharply now, 20 years after his debut album. 

Watching the rapper, now 44 years old, dominate sold-out arenas across the world and become a social media sensation and something of a cult phenomenon is a joy to behold. 

Who else could lead tens of thousands of people a night to party wearing a bald cap and a drawn-on goatee? Manchester donned their Pitbull costumes en masse and town looked all the better for it yesterday. 

For anyone having even a hint of ‘I don’t get it’ in their minds, you’ve forgotten what nightclubs were like in the late 2000s. An era where we would post 80 blurry photos on Facebook from one night out, and our makeup bags were just Dream Matte Mousse and a kohl eyeliner. 

It’s the same era where dance floors were absolutely dominated by Pitbull hits, from Hotel Room Service to Give Me Everything to International Love.

So his tour returning to Manchester feels like stepping back in time for all the 30-somethings in town, who all (myself included) decided to party like there were no consequences (currently staring into my cup of tea and remembering why I don’t usually drink wine on a school night). 

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The best thing about this gig is the way it strips all pretension away from all 23,500 people inside the Co-op Live. While we’d normally spend hours pampering and preening for a show to look our best, here we all stick a bald cap and a suit jacket on just let loose in a sea of people wearing the exact same uniform. I have never heard so many people breathlessly giggling their way through a show before. 

And while the gig itself is quite silly and camp (there are scantily-clad dancers everywhere and the guy in charge of the pyrotechnics is pretty trigger-happy), there are some properly talented musicians on stage too.

Pitbull is backed by multiple percussionists, keyboards, guitars, woodwind and more, and his Latino roots shine with songs like Culo and Gasoline, where the dancers salsa and his hips get extra wriggly.

We came because it’s silly but we stayed because it’s GOOD.

Prolific songwriter (‘Life is not a waste of time, time is not a waste of life. So let’s not waste any time, get wasted, and have the time of our lives’), party-starter, and philanthropist (he’s funded tuition-free schools in his hometown of Miami), Pitbull is soaking in every inch of the success that’s come his way. 

On stage at Co-op Live in Manchester, the lights come up between songs to Pitbull stood on his little platform, grinning cheesily and looking over his assembled mini Pitbulls like a proud overlord. This man is having the time of his life.

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Featured image: The Manc Group