Souls Of Mischief, X-Men, Buku One, Earthlings & DJ Badrok

Alright perpetrators, time to get your tracing paper out and take notes so you can act like you were there.

About a month ago I was excited. It looked as though Chico was catching up to the rest of the world. Hip-hop was blowing up. Underground acts were coming to town, hip-hop had its own night (Tuesdays) at Mr. Lucky and it was gaining notoriety, but best of all we had the "Word of Mouth" tour.

Two of my favorite underground-turned-mainstream groups, Jurassic 5 and the Dilated Peoples, came to town and played in front of an estimated 1600 supposed hip-hop fans. Thug-E-Fresh now is giving a big fat middle finger to over 1300 of those fake ass wannabees. However, despite the small crowd at The Brick Works on Thursday, each of the five acts that performed was pleased with the crowd’s response and appreciation for what they brought to Chico.

Alrighty then, on to the show. First to kick off the night was Chico golden boy, DJ Badrok. If you have lived in Chico for more than six months and have not seen Badrok perform don’t ever let me hear you claim to be part of Chico’s hip-hop scene as I will immediately pull your card. Badrok is everywhere and is dope every time he touches wax. Badrok made the show seamless, keeping the kiddies entertained between each set. Next up was the Bay Area’s Earthlings, who have made a few random trips to Chico over the past few years. I’ve seen the earthlings a couple of times before and know that MC Top Ramen is a rather dope freestyler. So after a minimal amount of heckling the Lord Top Ramen himself, along with fellow MC Boac (who usually seems lost on stage) finished off the last half of their set with a series of freestyles that left myself as well as a handful of new jacks downstairs very satisfied.

Next up was Project Blowed tag-along Buku One. Buku One, if you don’t remember (or, more likely, weren’t there) came through a few months back, opening for Blackalicious and Del the Funkee Homosapien. Buku One is a rather quirky emcee and personally I don’t see him becoming as well known as some of the legendary Project Blowed emcees, such as Peace or Aceyalone (just to name a couple.) But the kids loved him and all I can say is abundance of charisma goes a very long way.

Pep Love came up next. The elder "big man" of the Hiero crew came out for about 20 minutes, did two unknown songs, two older dope songs, including his new single "Crooked Angels," and tried to freestyle for a couple minutes. Cool, hopefully he will have enough material to do an entire set if he comes to town again.

Okay, okay, now to the meat. Ahh, the X-ecutioners — the only crew that could even compete with the now-defunct Invisibl Skratch Pickles graced The Brick Works stage next. I can attempt to describe the sonic insanity that occurred during this set, but only the folks who actually witnessed the entire X-ecutioners set will be able to understand. First, all four turntablists came out and demonstrated a plethora of scratching sound manipulation and beat juggling, as well as a merry-go-round display where each DJ took turns in a circle tweaking the same beat on the same deck and mixer. Then it was time for each X-ecutioner to do his own thing. First off was DJ Rob Swift. Swift, probably the best known of the crew for his two full-length productions, Soulful Fruit and The Ablist did about a ten-minute set showing versatility in all aspects of tuntablism and at one point doing a beat juggle of the Steve Miller song, "Fly Like an Eagle." The crowd went off. Next up in order were Mr. Sinista, Total Eclipse, and Roc Raida. All came through with equally dope routines but each with an added twist not usually experienced at DJ shows here on the West Coast: body tricks. Holy shit, I had almost forgot how dope it was to se a DJ actually put on a performance that did not solely depend upon the actual music they were creating. Under the leg, behind the back, 360-degree spins, shoulder, chin, and mouth scratches became the ultimate highlight of the night and the crowd ate it up like a slice of Main St. pizza at 2:05 in the morning, making more noise than you would expect from a mere 200 people. The X-ecutioners were gracious enough to come back and perform an encore for us, even doing the whole merry-go-round routine again. Make ya’ say uuuhhhhh!

Oh yeah, the Souls of Mischief also performed at this show as well. And the crew, consisting of some of Stanford Business School’s finest, managed to put on a pretty good show. The Souls did an equal amount of material from their new album, "Trilogy" coming out Oct. 24^th, as well classic favorites like "See Delite," "Oakland Blackouts," "That’s When Ya Lost," and of course, "‘93 Til Infinity." So after all was said and done, and after the fakers came back up from the U-Bar to catch the end of the show, the crew that put out its best material seven years ago managed to cap off a great show that even I was wary of attending.

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