Friday, January 26, 2007

GZA and Muggs and the State of Rap Music

Attempted my first visit to the Key Club on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, an allegedly decent concert venue according to The Detonator.
The Detonater returned into town for the show, hampered bad coming off a sinful four-day bender in Las Vegas. I did not envy his healthy exterior. According to post-show research, the first half-stepping buffoons were called Novacal, not to be confused with the drug company. At least the drug company has a mission, which is “Our mission is to develop novel, safe and effective non-antibiotic, anti-microbial compounds to reduce the threat of hospital infections. We aim to provide better treatments for conditions where traditional anti-infectives are too toxic, current antibiotic therapies are not effective, and antibiotics should not be used in order to reduce the growing danger of resistance.”
Glad I didn’t get infected by this collective’s brutal incompetence. Wish I’d brought tomatoes, this rap group was terrible, so bad they ended up having mikes cut off midway through their fourth song, which I think the general crowd was thankful for. Then, obviously bitter, they tried to leave the stage, which is where the bouncers stepped in to instruct them that they were leaving the wrong way.
A member of Camp Bully, who alerted me to the show down in Venice, gets points for having one girl that knew how to shake her bottom. One of the songs was memorable because of high annoyance factor ("Buy My CD") but the rest were overshadowed by confusion as to who was who and what they were doing. Their female vocalist, who flexed her range early when the crew took the stage, disappeared as their set continued and appeared to struggle finding the right times to chime in. The ensemble made me wonder how many microphones the Key Club had handy.
Note to rappers: Taking off your shirt doesn't make your rhymes harder. Also, it feels so lazily manufactured when there’s a rapper or rappers on stage without the music provider in sight. In most cases, it means they’re whack, which was proven faster than expected during the first trifling three hours of the show. Then we were temporarily saved by Gone Mad.
Gone Mad brought live instrumentation to their performance, which was greatly appreciated due to previous acts lack of a proper DJ. Their energy could certainly be commended, as they outshined the posers stepping up earlier.

Self Scientific came next and would not stop plugging his new album, seriously to the point of aggravation. Because of that, I’m not buying his album, and Hell, his beats weren’t very tight either.
When he’d egg the crowd on to yell out the proverbial hip-hop cliché “hell yeah,” the crowd would yell back “GZA!”

Everyone was pleased when he darted off the stage and Muggs appeared at the helm, starting off the anticipated set with some quality mixing of old Cypress Hill tunes, which forced contemplation of tossing the bothersome girl next to me down the stairwell in front us.
Then out came The Genius to chants of "Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang!"
The Genius showed the overly supportive Key Club crowd why he’s one of the best writers in the rap game. One song, a new one I’d never heard before, rhymed just about every animal I could possibly think of in a cohesive flow. A good line had something to do with the Wu turning over a leaf, while in another he managed to rhyme aardvark with something witty.
I wasn't completely recovered from past Bashing, so I was good for two beers. The Detonator threatened me later, that he'd gotten his 8th wind, but I ignored him and bobbed my head to the beat.
All in all, good venue, and the GZA really is one of the finest rappers working today. Overall, rap music sucks, with talentless MCs dominating the airwaves sporting unintelligent lyrics and messages destructive to the black community at large.

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