talib kweli-september 1st (yeah, i’m behind, i know…)
so, looking through the tiniest of my notebooks, i realized that i am a bit behind. i reviewed this show for Nightlife (October is out now, which also includes my opening and closing bells, my gushing profile on Cody ChestnuTT, my comments on Kanye’s latest in 80 words, creative folks in Montreal profiles, and my True Urban Legend Sin City Awards) but as we all know, my commentary spilleth over, so here’s the overflow of my sippy cup.
Opening DJ number one (mostly the reason that prompted me to lament the ADD-ness of hip hop djs in the review):
this cat obviously had good music, but decided to only tease us with 10 seconds of his best stuff, then move into TI (WHATCHU KNOW ABOUT THAT?!) he was also a bit too “i am going to follow the Okayplayer guide to real hip hop to the point where i have no imagination of my own and jump on that biggie/pac, james brown/dilla bandwagon and feel myself too much” for my liking.
nonetheless, he did have jems, among them: Luniz’ “5 on it” (though it always brings me back to that house party that i went to with mizthang with that dood living in the closet and they had it on repeat, crazy filipinos…shoot, that ish happened like ten years ago and i still remember it), that Dre song where Erykah took the hook and released it so much fresher (“bag lady”) at the same time, Busta’s “break your neck”, Meth and Mary, Nas and Lauryn (see?), Onyx “slam”, but he gets mad, mad props for bringing Lost Boyz’ “me and my crazy world” and letting it play out.
Opening DJ number two
homeboy handled this task a bit better and even managed to pull off the “hell yeah, now somebody scream…” of which i was starting to wonder about the shelf life. his gems: “passin’ me by” (why nobody ever plays “your mama”? or even “runnin’”?), an ODB to Meth to Cypress Hill to Biggie medley, where he scratched out all the “n*ggas” so as to avert the awkwardness of the Common show in Vancouver where the entire Commodore full of white boys was screaming the word along with the song and the DJ cut the music to highlight this. but his crowning glory? B.O.B. loud. yippee.
Blacksmith
so the banner on the wall made me wonder about the Jean Grae, but let’s leave it as wishfull foreshadowing for now. Talib’s dj was showing images from the albums of the songs though, so she had to come out…and yes..she did, in a muthafuckin’ apron with a platinum scalp, rockin’ the mic like there was no tomorrow (the two have a nice rhymin’ chemistry, and though she upped the ante, he held his own). it was their last show, so they got silly, and my heart almost skipped a beat when he says, “joining me via satellite…”, i almost peed my pants since the Blackstar poster was up, but really it was Kim Jong-Il’s puppet appearance in Team America since they sampled the Beatles song (“all the lonely people…” i can’t remember the song right now). but their best banter was when they start doing that “i’m a sagittarius” of the old skool r&b (see Clarence Carter, The Whispers, etc.) and go into “Dick in a Box”, that’s right, Jean Grae is my freakin’ hero.
