Def Jux All Stars & Rhyme Sayers Showcasefeat. Cannibal Ox, Mr. Lif, Eyedea and Abilities & Atmosphere

Last Monday night at the Great American Music Hall, as we milled around the floor drinking $4 plastic cups full of beer, we found some friends who were at the Def Jux / Rhyme Sayers in-store showcase at Amoeba Records earlier that day, and who told us that one of the evening’s headliners, Aesop Rock, was not at the free afternoon performance. I didn’t like hearing that.
On stage, a DJ by the name of Sick One was mixing and slicing a selection of old-school and underground hip-hop for the growing audience. A lot of people were outside smoking, freestyling and beatboxing in circles, and just hanging around in the cool, wet night air, watching the lightning light up the sky and nodding their heads to the beats spilling out through the front doors. Slowly, members of the Def Jux crew gathered on the stage - Mr. Lif and the duo of Vast Air and Vordul, a.k.a. Cannibal Ox; Aesop Rock wasn’t with them - and people started filing in.
There was simply no Aesop Rock that evening; Cannibal Ox and Mr. Lif were alone, and it took the prodding of a rather agitated audience member before Mr. Lif admitted that Aesop had the flu and wouldn’t be performing. Some people actually left, and I was disappointed for sure, but there was so much more to come…
On stage, the life of the Def Jux set was Mr. Lif. He kicked his time off with an a cappella about the nation’s current situation and the true roots of our problems, and then rolled into his own material, which is generally a nice mixture between hard funk breaks and some abstract and inventive beat lines combined with clever, intellectually and socio-politically inclined lyrics. After a song or two and some hype-worthy crowd interaction, Lif, stepped back and Cannibal Ox took the front of the stage. They rolled through a few tracks off their album, Cold Vein, and the evening went on like that, as the Can Ox guys and Mr. Lif traded places on the front of the stage while Sick One took care of the beats.
The Def Jux was over far too soon and they were quickly replaced on stage by the Rhyme Sayers crew’s Eyedea and DJ Abilities. This Minneapolis duo is part of the best Midwestern hip-hop crew of late - the aforementioned Rhyme Sayers - and it was obvious that these two performers were the reason that a good portion of the audience was there. But that sentiment wasn’t shared all the way around. Eyedea, the winner of several national-level freestyle rhyme battles, represented for sure, but his written rap style doesn’t suit everyone. He tends to grab a key line, word or phrase and repeat it as a chorus to emphasize its thematic importance within the song’s construct; it can get a bit tiring. There’s no dispute as to his phenomenal freestyling skills, and he showcased those to the crowd’s delight, but as far as his written raps go, they just don’t have the punch, despite (or perhaps because of) his attempts to the counter. Abilities, however, was a pleasant surprise. Anyone familiar with his work knows he can juggle and scratch with skill, but a lot of the audience seemed astounded at how technical Abilities can really get, and he was given several minutes in which to slice up and generally fuck with a grip of beats.
The final set of the evening came from the Rhyme Sayers’ Atmosphere, a duo consisting of rapper Slug and whichever DJ he happens to be using at any given time. At the Great American Music Hall, however, the Atmosphere set was DJ’d by none other than Mr. Dibbs, vinyl manipulator and creator of some amazing mixtape-style albums. Just before the beat started to rock, Dibbs donned a cheap plastic mask of a girl’s face that had “Lucy” scrawled across the cheeks in black ink, and then he kicked Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” The Great American Music Hall audience, most of whom looked more like Sabbath fans than independent hip-hop fans, went nuts. Slug, dressed in jeans and a zip-front hoodie with the hood up over a matching “Lucy” mask, joined Dibbs on stage, and after Dibbs was through turning “War Pigs” into Swiss cheese, the pair removed their masks and dropped a set that was full of new music as well as classic Atmosphere material, and it was obvious that Slug was the star of the show.
Aside from the fact that this was one of only a few Slug appearances on the Rhyme Sayers tour, which made it a real treat, he was also the best performer of the evening - laid back but not sloppy, on top of his game but not wound-up on stage. Despite some weird self-effacing emotional turmoil, the ease of Slug’s set just happened and its simplicity was as impressive as his skill on the mic. It was that combination of style, music, delivery and stage presence that made Slug’s set the savior of the evening’s festivities.
- Max Sidman

Bookmark:

Comments down for maintenance.