Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, Sleep and Henri Osborne & AutiTron of Kemetic Suns

The door outside the Justice League was a mess - an entanglement of parallel and opposing lines for those who had tickets, those who were picking up tickets at will call, and those who didn't have tickets. KiloJoule a.k.a. AutiTron, a rapper from the Bay Area independent crew Kemetic Suns, was standing on the sidewalk reading the riot act to everyone standing in line, admonishing us for missing the first set of the evening - his. KiloJoule explained to the people standing in the cold, city night air, that, as an independent MC, he doesn't have distribution or a label backing him up, so he needs to hustle, selling CDs out of boxes at shows and handling his own business on and off stage. And judging by his gung-ho attitude on the sidewalk, he was good at handling his business. But I was stuck in line and couldn't see his set, so in the spirit of lookin' out for independent hip-hoppers, check out Kemetic Suns online at www.kemeticsuns.com, and buy a goddamn CD.
When we finally entered the venue, we found the bar in the center of the Justice League's intimate but tall and wide-open, single-story space a bit swamped, but more manageable than the lines out in front; and a quick sweep of the room revealed a varied group of people milling amongst the hippies-turned-hip-hoppers, backpackers and all-purpose hipsters who generally populate these kinds of Bay Area underground rap shows. On stage, the mics were being warmed up by a Seattle-based MC duo, Sleep and Henri Osborne, who kicked their set to the sounds of a DAT machine. I prefer to see MCs rap over beats provided by a DJ, but when you're unsigned and hella broke, you gotta do what you gotta do, and these guys did a pretty decent job. Sleep was the most impressive of the two, displaying an ability to spit rhymes at lightning-fast speeds with clarity and inventive delivery. Sleep and Osborne repeatedly professed their love for the City by the Bay, but save a handful of raucous fans in front, the S.F. crowd didn't really return the love - tough town. After about 40 minutes, the pair gave up the stage to the Def Jux DJ, Sick 1, who took his place behind the wheels of steel and dropped a variety of tracks from back in the day, providing a soundtrack to the b-boy circle that broke out on the side of the dance floor.
At about quarter-to-midnight, after 30 minutes of a DJ'd tunes, the Definitive Juxtaposition (Def Jux) Records crew crept onto the stage lead by Aesop Rock, whose trucker-style Pepsi hat (mesh back, foam front) was pulled low and crooked over his face and covered with the hood of his sweatshirt, barely concealing a twisted grin. He was closely followed by Cannibal Ox's Vordul and the commanding Vast Aire, who was carrying a bottle of Crown Royal, the last ounces of which were sloshing around in the bottle's chubby bell. The trio wasted no time in setting things off, as Aesop shed his hood, grabbed a mic and jumped right into a pastiche of familiar lyrics laid over a new beat.
The set broke down the way every other Def Jux show I've ever witnessed has (three, at this point): Sick 1 throws down an Aesop Rock beat, and Aesop kills it on the mic as the Can Ox guys back him up; then the DJ drops a Cannibal Ox beat, and Aesop drops back and play the part of hype man as Can Ox's Vast Aire and Vordul rip their songs. It's a cool way to do a set, and it adds a bit of life to the stage to have a bunch of guys up there in an organized performance, rather than just one rapper and a DJ.
Half way through the set, the three MCs took a seat on the stage as Sick 1 performed a 10 minute routine that was cool, and showed his technical ability, but lacked originality - it smacked of a famous routine by Beat Junkie Roc Raida, among others. Aesop, Vordul and Vast threw down a short freestyle cipher that was drunkenly cool; Aesop and Vast paired up to perform "Attention Span," their rhyme duet off of Aesop's Float; but the most sublime moment of the show was when Aesop took the opportunity during a set break to drop new rap, an a capella, and it was simply ill - something about his girl leaving him without paying the cable bill, chronic masturbation and "praying to the gods of pornography and Playstation." Damn.
Aesop's set consisted mostly of material from his 2000 Mush Records release, Float - including the phenomenal "Big Bang," for which he changed the machine-gun style chorus to something a bit easier for the live setting; some heckling from the front, however, prodded him into dropping the chorus, a capella, after the beat subsided, and the crowd went crazy. From the 2001 Def Jux album, Labor Days, he played "Boombox"; "Maintenance," the B-side to the "Coma" 12-inch single; and he closed out with an abbreviated version of "Daylight." Cannibal Ox's set contributions included the cream from their debut release, The Cold Vein, including "A B-Boy Alpha," "The F-Word," "Iron Galaxy" and "Straight off the D.I.C." The third Bay Area performance by the Def Jux crew in the last six months (Oakland in August '01, then SF in September '01) was by the far the best set of the three.
- Max Sidman
- Photos by Elias Perez

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