Near the end of the tour's North American leg, West performed the song for a crowd of tens of thousands during the final night of Lollapalooza on August 3, 2008 in his hometown of Chicago, where he co-headlined the festival with Nine Inch Nails. The live venue was slightly more stripped-down than his standard Glow in the Dark Tour concert. While the big-budget stage did not feature holograms or lunar landscapes, it was still equipped with blinding strobes, moody lighting and rolling fog. West dedicated the bombastic yet disarmingly earnest and emotional set to his late mother, Donda West, and made several mentions of her throughout. He performed with a space-age backing band composed of a percussionist/DJ, robot-suited guitarists, and futuristic female singers wearing in foot-high shoulder pads. West took to the stage accompanied by a wall of pulsing synths and chimes while bathed in eerie white light. After opening with "Good Morning," he ended by pausing at center stage, stroking his beard and cracking a sly smile before segueing into "Heard 'Em Say," to the delight of the audience. "Heard 'Em Say" was among a list of songs that West performed during a 90-minute set when he headlined the annual dance music festival Global Gathering on July 25, 2008, becoming the very first hip-hop artist to do so. After teasing the audience with a snippet of "Stronger", West appears in a cloud of smoke to perform the songs "I Wonder" and "Heard Em Say." He was accompanied by backup singers, a disc jockey and three pairs of drums while the concert featured extensive use of lighting effects.