Live Hip Hop C/D?

this is a joke question no? and why does it apply only to hip hop?

a lot of bands can't reproduce the record 'feel' but then if they did reproduce what happened in the studio then what is the point.

I personally I like it when things go wrong.

others didn't work so well... scrath perverts were impressive, but only in a technical sense, and roots manuva was just plain boring.

over the years, i've seen a few good shows: ATCQ, Beasties, the occasional De La Soul show, the arsonists, mike ladd. i'd love to see Method Man +Redman together; theyv'e toured together enough that they should have it down by now.

that sounds like a really skewed ttaste in hip-hop, but i've found most of the other artists i like just don't come across live.

It is a serious question. It's not just Hip Hop that the recreating the studio feel problem/opportunity applies to, but I've seen a lot of Hip hop especially where they just have instrumental versions of the album and rap over it. Sometimes the vocals are played back too and they just rap a second layer of the same thing over the top. That's pointless.

I like mistakes too!

dom: yes... tho i'm not sure if it can be called 'impromptu' if they do it as the intro and outro of every show.
um, which they do.

Add Alias and Themselves to my "Awesome live Hip Hop" list.

Might as well put Headcase Boys in the "Pretty dam funny indiginous Welsh Hip Hop in a tutu, smoking a cigar with sax solos" category while we're at it.

I just missed the sell out Goldiee Lookin' Chains gig.

AAARRRGGHHH!!!!

1) Seeing Slick Rick bring out Doug E. Fresh and busting "La Di Da Di" and "The Show". I thought the fucking floor in the club was gonna cave in, everyone was jumping up and down like mad - it was truly stunning. Doug E. Fresh rocking that beatbox shit is untouchable.
2) Black Dot Collective at the '01 Mission Creek Festival at the El Rio. Super-smart, totally freestyled, no DJ - all just wordplay and beatboxing. The one and only time I've seen them, they seem really obscure which is a shame.

3) Digital Underground rocking "It's a Good Thing That We're Rappin'" during a "free Mumia" rally on a hot summer afternoon. An old hippie changed his sign to read "Mysogynist lyrics will not free Mumia". That was some funny shit.

Would love to see The Roots

Buck 65
Public Enemy
Sage Francis
Doomtree
Atmosphere
P.O.S.

Caught shabazz palaces live last night – not sure if it was because I was feeling ill but I expected something a bit sharper. The sound wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great, all you get is overdriven bass, but that’s normal for rap shows. But it meant you cant really hear the lyrics that well, which for a group like this, I think is quite important (or maybe I should just be happy with listening to the flows). But it was more or less just a basic rap show, except for the end, where they did some jamming/vamping/improv. I ‘d like to have heard more of that to be honest, rather than just song after song where ishmal was basically just rapping over the instrumentals. I know that’s what most hip hop shows are like (and before anyone accuses me of applying rockism or whatever, ive been to loads of rap shows, some good, where there’s a dj involved to make the flow more live, or the rapper is more animated like with busta or the alkaholiks or whoever), and that can be fine, but its just ‘static’ to me. I might as well be listening to the CD in a club. Anyway, for an experimental group like SP, I just expected them to fuck around with the structures a bit more.

While trying to respond positively to this thread its dawned on me that most hiphop I've seen live in the UK has disappointed me in some way.

From my initial teenage excitement of getting to see Gza at Phoenix Festival 1996 (he pulled out at the last minute), through to watching Grandmaster Flash phoning in a greatest hits set in Bristol last Friday - it just seems like most of them can't be arsed.

Other lowlights:
Schooly D in Cardiff (late 90's) - hte dude was mumbling, shuffling around in a trenchcoat and shades, clearly couldn't wait to escape.

Public Enemy at Freeze Festival 2012 (Battersea Power station) - Watching a pair of 50 year olds shouting about social injustice while performing to a crowd entirely composed of trust fund snowboarders left a strange taste in the mouth.

Cypress Hill (Glastonbury 2007) - Rapping about AK's to middle class yurt-dwellers in mud. They did a phcking bongo solo.

Basically give me a decent live grime MC any day. In retrospect I should stop going to see major established hiphop acts at music festivals - clearly completely the wrong vibe / no hunger / just phoning it in.

watching Grandmaster Flash phoning in a greatest hits set in Bristol last Friday

I've never even seen Flash play hip-hop, just dance-pop of the day with Smells Like Teen Spirit and Song 2 thrown in. After a 10-minute hagiographic video intro.

i think the vibe is maybe more key for hip hop shows than other genres. the few shows ive seen in the US have def had a better atmosphere on the whole. i think most grime shows ive seen have been better too, actually. theres just more energy.

Yep he did the whole Nirvana thing. For someone who virtually invented scratching I was disappointed that all he seemed to do was these basic 'wikiwikiwiki' baby scratches. I mean I'm glad he didn't do the full-autist turntablist thing at the expense of listenable music for an hour, but come on dude - you're grandmaster flash ffs.

(xpost)

he invented what became turntablism, but he isnt as good as rob swift or q-bert - i dont think he's ever been...

"Grandmaster! Cut Faster!"

CUT SPEED INTENSIFIES TO 10 SCRATCHES PER MINUTE

basically, flash would prob have been laughed at if he entered any dmc championship after 1980

(not that there even was a dmc tournament in 1980 but you get the idea)

Back on topic though, not every live hiphop act I've seen has been dud. Mykki Blanko was amazing at Sonar last summer, properly enthuisiastic and more importantly, legible - all over some fat backing instrumentals from Sinden too.

Non have been memorable. The clips of ones I see today look even worse than ones I used to go to.

But check out this Wu live show from 93, the last time that black people filled up their shows. ODB had a stage presence not many compare to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew_rYqrfE0g

I've never been to a show with this much energy feedback in hip hop. Festivals never have good crowd/act feedback really, or its different with the barriers up.

was watching that (so-so) illmatic docu and the old club footage of biz markie, roxanne shante, etc looked fun/electric.

wu were fun/hype when i saw them a few years ago in london. it was like they had actually planned it a bit...

My favourite part of the Nas doc was that he basically wouldn't have had a career if he hadn't been genuinely scared of getting his ass kicked by Roxanne Shante

Nas was good live when I saw him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viyxoNf0R8Y

looks and sounds pretty brilliant.