Vast Aire, Brother Ali, Faydog & DJ Facials

The current tour of Vast Aire and Brother Ali is a bizarre one, with big name acts like the GZA and Immortal Technique sharing the stage on some dates, but not all. The show last Monday at the Brick Works proved to be as uncanny as the tour itself. For one, the show actually started on time, and as anyone who knows anything could tell you, hip-hop shows in college towns never start on time. With a small audience gathering, locals Faydog and DJ Facials took the stage, and proceeded to rip. Although three-fourths of the crowd had yet to arrive, the duo rocked a set of mostly new Faydog material, but Fay’s classic “Nuttin’ Nice” was also unleashed on a group of virgin ears.
Next up was Rhymesayers MC, Brother Ali. Even though most people probably think of Brother Ali as just some rapper who is in the same crew as every spock-rocker girl’s favorite emo rapper, Slug (Atmosphere), let it be known that Brother Ali comes correct with his rhymes and sounds nothing like his crew’s frontman. As the crowd was still growing, Brother Ali ran through standout tracks off his solo LP, Shadows On The Sun, including “Forest Whitiker,” “Champion” and the crowd interactive “Star Quality.” The highlight of his set proved to be when Ali jumped into his female friendly track “Prince Charming,” which seemed to be aimed at the small group of ladies in the front row, and in mid-song he bluntly stated something along the lines of, “you just wanna get on stage, you don’t even know my name.” Rightfully so…at the end of the song he had to ask the audience where the young ladies had gone.
The larger than life Vast Aire Kramer took the stage with his fellow Def Jux DJ Cip-One and sideman, Karneige, to a somewhat undersized audience for the venue, albeit it a larger turnout than I expected for a Monday night underground hip-hop show in Chico. The Cannibal Ox MC, who is currently promoting his debut solo album, Look Mom No Hands, quickly ran through a few verses from The Cold Vein, including “Raspberry Fields,” and then finished his set with a few tracks off of his new LP. After performing for something close to 30 minutes, Vast just said “thank you and peace,” and then exited the stage. There was an awkward encore-less blue-balls feeling in the crowd as the majority of the audience stuck around waiting for more of the show. Eventually, the headliners took the stage and passed the mic around for a few minutes before the show started to slow down into an autograph session. Everyone was out of the doors around 11:30.
It was obvious that this wasn’t one of the highlight spots on the tour for the performers, but I must say, Chico represented remarkably well for some underground rap cats who haven’t reached their full potential yet. Not to say that the show was equivalent to the infamous Nirvana Chico show, yet it’s apparent both of these MCs have a promising future, and those in attendance will remember when they saw Vast Aire and Brother Ali play in a small college town.
- Paul Davis
- Photo By Bobby Dupree

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