J-Live & Maktub

First on stage was Maktub, a five-piece band coming from Seattle. At first glance it seemed a rather odd sight; some weird hippie jam band opening up for the educated hip-hop of J-Live. The shoeless guy dancing in circles made me wonder if I was at the right place, but as the band kept on playing, their sound grew on me. The band held their own on stage, but their short singer with a big afro kind of threw me off. He used two different mics to sing out of: one for his singing voice and the other for a spooky, electrical voice. At times he seemed to resemble a young Al Green or perhaps a not so R&B-ish Maxwell, yet at others he just came off as annoying. But the bass player kept laying down the fresh bass lines for all the hip-hop kids and the spooky melodic tunes of the organ kept the heads nodding. Even though the lead singer wasn’t my cup of soup, they still managed to keep my interest and attention.
Considering it was a Wednesday night, the San Francisco crowd had grown to a decent size. J-Live jumped up on stage and brought Wordsworth along with him, who is distinguished through his contributions to the Lyricist Lounge projects. Wordsworth and J-Live threw different songs back and forth as well as freestyle verses for the enthused crowd. Although the show-goers came for J-Live, it was Wordsworth’s freestyles that amazed the crowd, that is until J broke into his “Braggin’ Writes” routine. J took over the turntables from his DJ and proceeded to juggle a beat while rapping over it. I guess J-Live does this same routine every show, but it is so damn impressive it would be foolish of him not to perform it every chance he gets. I’ve seen him do it on a video before, but my jaw still dropped when I saw it in person. The show went on, and J-Live performed other crowd favorites such as “The Best Part,” “Like This Anna,” and “Satisfied.” After an encore and another sweet freestyle session, J-Live finished up with a new track about his walkman.
At the end of the reappearance, J-Live started scratching, and basically served his own DJ. The two traded off bars of scratching but J-Live honestly came off harder on the wheels of steel. All in all, J-Live brought an excellent show to the Bay Area that was worth the commute and scratch.

– Paul Davis
– Photo by Kevin Henderson

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