highfireDANGER!

incendiary wit from a perpetually curious techfemme... and the crap I find on the interwebs.

genre (hip) hopping: the first in a series of genre swaps by the iggli blog team.

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gotta love tonedeff.

i’m not sure why i never got into hip hop and why it never got into me.

i can’t blame it on living in the suburbs, or my WASPY catatonia (lol), because those are currently prerequisites for many hip hop lovers in America. in my formative years, artists like Nine Inch Nails or Tool or Tori Amos always stole my attention away. but recently i’ve realized it’s short-sighted to think hip hop is not a part of my life.

for example, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails recently toured with Saul Williams, collaborated with El-P, and compared his creative process of his most recent album Year Zero to Public Enemy’s; Tori Amos reinterpreted an Eminem song , and Wu Tang Clan just got the rights to the Beatles’ “My Guitar Gently Weeps.” okay, i don’t like the Beatles, but i’m just saying that hip hop intersects the alternative genre where i locate the majority of my taste.

thus, it was time for me to pay homage and I found the perfect opportunity!

Reed, a friend and iggli colleague of mine, suggested a genre-swap – to go and experience a type of music that is far outside of one’s normal tastes and then write about it. lucky for both of us, he’s a promoter with Nancy Drew Presents, and was one of the masterminds behind the incredibly successful october 6 show at the Fox Theater. the bill was Cunnin Lynguists, PackFM, Sleep of Chicarones, Zelly Rock, Whiskey Blanket, tonedeff, and audible audities.

i got to see it from upstairs, downstairs, back stage side stage... lucky me! it was truly an experience.

would you like to know one main conclusion from the evening?

people are wrong!
the accusations you hear about hip hop do not apply wholesale.
the acts that I saw had a ridiculous amount of skill, linguistically and physically.
i always hear in the media, that hip hop is a useless bunch of soulless thugs.
these were some of the nicest, most polite people i have ever met. they are also some of the smartest and well-spoken.

kids, turn off fox news!

another remarkable thing about the evening was the energy. the conviction in the room, the love for the artists was unbelievable. even for the opening acts, the appreciation and attention was intense. now, these aren’t acts you’d yet see on the billboard charts, but it was as though they were the greatest in the world at that moment. their interaction with the crowd was indicative with their impeccable showmanship and the crowd showed their appreciation endlessly. i was very impressed that even the openers got so much attention, as a lot of the rock shows i’ve been, the openers usually get little to no attention. i’m not sure why this is, and why this show was different, and if this is generally a trend in hip hop (i can’t say since this was only my first show) but it was an interesting observation!

i was also lucky enough to sit in on an interview with the headliners of the show, Cunnin Lynguists, conducted chiefly by out tha box television. they were very fascinated with the fact that i had never been to a hip hop show, and i was grateful that they let such an amateur like myself be a part of it! i asked, what seemed to me, like fairly informed questions: what do you think about the state of hip hop?; what do you think about the push to remove certain words from hip hop altogether? i will certainly post the interview when it is up.

my second and final conclusion is this: it is worth it to go and experience a completely alien form of music. keep your mind open and you might find a new artist. at the very least, if you work for iggli, you can write off the ticket in your taxes.


Cunnin Lynguists - Fox Theatre 10.06.07

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look that at that CROWD!

1 comments:

18.10.07 Anonymous said...

Ummm..... Thanks for the preview. But what about Charlotte Martin?????