So I’ve been to countless Hip-Hop shows and I’ve performed at even more, so when I attend one and I’m part of the crowd its hard for me.
So I’ve been to countless Hip-Hop shows and I’ve performed at even more, so when I attend one and I’m part of the crowd its hard for me.
See I’m a student first, so I’m always looking at what is happening instead of just listening, so much to the point that people often think I’m security when I’m at show.
No Hip-Hop hands here, sorry.
All this aside, with the 30 thousand plus attendee-madness that is Soundset Festival only weeks away, I was excited to have the opportunity to catch a long set from one of my favorite acts to see live, Rhymesayers‘ legendary duo Atmosphere, at The Norva and I was not disappointed.
I believe Rhymesayers is a lot like what we have going on here in Richmond, they built their brand, business, sound, and acts from the ground up in their seemingly distant hometown of Minneapolis.
As a now, more successful than ever touring act, Atmosphere usually fills their card with a few opening acts who bring something strong but different to the table, and of course a DJ who can rock a set. This show had Rhymesayers’ newest star, the young deM atlaS with DJ Adatrack, and B Dolan of Strange Famous Records.
I’m pretty familiar with deM atlaS’ latest release, DWNR, and his other work, and it was great to see how much he has grown as a performer when he kicked the show off, comfortably getting his crowd under his control. I’m always impressed that someone who does such a vocally demanding set can run and jump around (at one point he even hit a jump kick in the air and landed into a split) with very little verbal assistance from his DJ Adatrack, who is often so into the set that he says the words to the songs but rarely into the microphone.
The crowd was engaged, and after deM atlaS was done DJ Adatrack stuck around to keep the crowd rocking with some mixing of his own until it was time for B. Dolan to take the stage.
Now this is a guy I know nothing about, but again if he wasn’t dope, he wouldn’t be on the tour with Atmosphere.
I couldn’t have been more surprised. This guy had a set that was so versatile yet cohesive with a laptop (DJ Spacebar) as his only support. He touched on everything, from being tough, to politics and police (“Film The Police”) to an accapella set of verses telling the tale of Rick Ross and Rick Ross (one was a hustler the other is a rapper) to paying homage to LL Cool J’s “You Can’t Dance” by having a sexy chick (possibly a stripper) who was in the crowd come on stage for a dance battle while he dissed and danced battled her in between verses. And after all that he even “got on his emo shit” for us.
I was very impressed and recommend if you get a chance to see him perform that you do.
Now the hallmark of a good show is that feeling of mental exhaustion, that you’ve seen so much that you need to take it all in, but that there’s no time to, and this night was no exception as at that very moment it was time for Atmosphere to handle the business.
By now the nearly sold-out crowd had packed the room and as Ant and DJ Plain Ole Bill got things started (Atmosphere rocks with 2 DJ’s…and for around a hour usually) with the lights dim, Slug hit the stage and went straight into “January On Lake St” which was followed with a bit of Slug banter.
The thing about an Atmosphere set though is no time is wasted; you might get 30 seconds to a minute of talk between songs, but they know what their fans want.
That’s why you get to hear, and even more so see, songs like “Fuck You Lucy,” “The Woman With The Tattooed Hands,” “Yesterday” (with an anecdote about Slug being recognized earlier that day by a fan in the mall and putting him on the guest list because he knew that song) and several other records, from the earlier 90’s to tracks off their most recent release, Southsiders.
Again, engagement reigned supreme to the point where during one song Slug jokingly told the crowd when they started to go into a verse with him word for word “I know the fuckin words,” the love was real. But what makes a set more than just a bunch of records? When you go off the rails; and that’s exactly why happened when Atmosphere asked the openers to take the stage for an impromptu cypher… but only after Ant “played something with potential” as Slug had the audience say.
I’ve seen a few of these cyphers within sets, and I must say this was probably the best one yet. Afterword, everyone stayed on stage for “Trying To Find A Balance” (with an on stage knee slide from Dem Atlas included) which really provided an overall sense of what Atmosphere and Rhymesayers has been about since day one: not just being the best, but bringing the best out of each other and inspiring others to do the same as we are all searching for something, and as the saying goes: that’s Hip-Hop.
