I Still Don't Like Rap

Atmosphere, Micranots, Brother Ali, and OddJobs
Commodore Ballroom
Sunday September 14, 2003

I know, you're all looking at the dancing Gir and then flashing to make sure the name still says "Corinne" and then doing a triple take back up to Gir again, thinking to yourself "Isn't Atmosphere...? and the rap...? and the hip-hop...? and isn't Corinne...? with the rap...?" Fear not, people, I am not a convert.
So how did the little tiny weirdo white girl end up going to probably one of the more celebrated "underground" (not mainstream or not MTV) hip-hop act's show? It's called an abuse of the guest list.
Grae called me while I was visiting my parents' this weekend (happy birthdays all around for everyone but Steve and I) and asked me if I wanted to go to the show. I said "sure" because all free entertainment is entertainment I can afford, and hanging out with Grae this weekend appealed to me after spending lengthy amounts of time playing Mario Golf with my brothers and fending of my crazy grandmother (who repeated the following phrase no less that five times in succession during one conversation with nothing in between: "We sure had good times, didn't we?"--really crazy).
My parents dropped me off at home with a minute to spare, and Grae and I headed downtown to get into line. While I was concerned that after attending a family dinner with no time to change I may have looked like a wacky-cracker, it turned out there were a lot of indie-rockers in attendance (as well as others... but I wasn't the whitest fixture).
Now onto the review from the point of view of someone who doesn't like hip-hop or rap or emo-hop or anything in that genre, despite this latest attempt.

2(DJ)+3(MC) = OddJobs
With three MCs, they were a lively bunch, and definitely showed that they were there to enjoy themselves and not just there to make a few dollars and see the sites. They looked like they genuinely loved what they were doing. Perhaps as this was the third show (Calgary and Nelson being their lead ins), the audience was feeding them with a little (little by Commodore calculations) crowd in front of the stage of about 100-150 people (the procession to the stage was exact pacing on the part of the audience). They reminded me of when I used to collect trading cards (for my dad. Sure he would buy them "for us" and sort them out "for us" and keep them in a binder and box for doubles "for us" and trade them at card shows to finish off the collection "for us". But really... who has the cards now, Dad?) and one of the more popular sets were of the "Yo! MTV Raps" series (I and II). There was the same image of a "band" of sorts of your DJs and your MCs and there was somehow a sense of unity within the band that other "groups" were getting by with only one DJ and one MC. The Group versus The Duo. As you can see, I haven't touched on their lyrics or their music. Get used to it. All members of the band were overdressed (I admired the one guy for keeping his touque or knitted cap on the entire cookin' time) and were rapidly turning a hip-hop display into a strip show. To my dismay or delight (not sure) they remained fully clothed after removing some two or more layers. I guess Calgary and Nelson have colder venues? Nelson. Hahahaha.

Negative Hip Hop: Brother Ali
Picture this guy from his name. What does this image conjure up. Add in the fact that he's a hip-hop artist from Minnesota. Now what do you have? If you said anything other than a tubby white bald guy, you're probably looking at the inverse negative. Is this review superficial enough yet? Wait until I get pretentious with the next group. Admittedly, if I had to make a pick for the category "Opening Act That Most Held My Interest", it would have been this anomaly of a rounder white guy (who looked older than he is). Here I go into a comment about the music of the show: it was his song "Forest Whitiker" that kept me intently tuned into what he was saying. Apologies for whatever pop-ups you suffer from that link, but for the love of the interweb get a blocker. Anyway, the "you ain't gotta love me" message was incredibly powerful coming from this strange looking guy. Evidence that self acceptance and self-appreciation are their own forms of extreme beauty, I was impressed. And so I liked him. Much like a battle hip-hop guy (white kids like me see: "8 Mile"), he was aggressive and full of stage presence. Just him and a DJ.

Divisions: Micranots
Yeah, perhaps I'm just a wacky racist or just bigoted and will never understand where the African-American communities values and attitudes fit in, but this is my take on the only "real" black hip-hop artist (Grae will have his arguments against me, to be sure): My main and number one problem (and probably my only... can't think of others, nor should I have to find other faults if they aren't there) coming from my integrated white family that promoted that all people are people and the value of their lives and choices... blah blah blah blah... is this notion of segregation that the Micranots front man took to the audience. It began by a call out of the sexes. "Ladies of the house" and "My brothers of the house" were his division lines. Perhaps because of Atmosphere (explained later), I felt that the audience had a high number of females present for a hip-hop show (most of the girls in that scene tend to go for the dance aspect of the music, while their male counter parts are drawn towards the actual hip-hop of it all); the ration was about 4:1 in favour of the guys. Anyway, I also had problems with the wording (Grae assures me that this is all normal and I am being weird) of "ladies" versus "my brothers". A division of us and them. Not dehumanizing or emphasizing differences, but certainly drawing attention that the girls in the audience are almost guests into the brotherhood (Grae is probably saying that I am reading too much into this... which I may very well be, but it made me feel like I was something other than on his side). This probably would have slid off my back had this line-drawing of us and them ceased.
But, no, he rambles off some anti-police sentiments and asks the newly-thinking youth "how much they hate the police" and proceeds to break into a wonderfully predictable audience-MC dialogue of "Fuck the police" to which the reply is every time "Fuck the police" (as I type this I picture my buddy Sting shrugging in an act of non-defiance and almost curiousity to see what the raping from 1000 19-25 year olds would be like). Yeah, fine: tradition. Yeah, fine: it's his roots. Yeah, fine: where he's from the police are bastards. Yeah, fine: his DJ was stopped by Canada Customs and not let in based on a criminal charge that may very well have been over-emphasized from either the US police of Canada Customs. But here, we are, a bunch of cracker kids, that will never (or almost never) have any serious run-in with police officers. Moreover, the odds of minorities being fucked by the police is incredibly blown out of proportion in such rags as The Province in Vancouver (anything to vilify anyone to sell papers to the thought-free masses). And further, we have some damn lenient policing in Vancouver over half-laws like marijuana. While, I am sure that our buddy from the Micranots would spend 5 to 10 years behind bars for the possession of the same amount of marijuana one would roll openly in front of a police officer here, it just doesn't happen here. He took a position of authority (in the fan-performer relation) and vilified people who chose the profession of policing. These anti-police sentiments can be appropriate when used appropriately. For instance in cases where individual police officers who have abused their authority are named. I may have let this segregation slide if it had not been for the other comments OR if he specified a specific Vancouver incident (easy homework, really) where police were in abuse of their powers and let the youth understand and communicate the frustration rather than a blanket "anyone in a position of authority should be screwed over". Okay, okay, I'll ease up about that one now. And then the third dividing line he made involved a very specific "us and them". Grae says it was a division between commercial rap and underground hip hop; I had the feeling he was talking about hip hop versus pop/rock/etc.--a division, either way. He went into inter-song banter about paying for tickets to a show ("We don't put on shows. We throw parties!") and having to sit through them fail to reproduce their studio efforts. Because y'know only underground hip hop, the art of talking in rhythm into a microphone is the only truly reproducible music in a live setting. And further, it's the only thing worth seeing live because at other shows there is no audience energy. Aren't they so great compared to everything else? That was my beef with this guy. I lost interest really fast.

"Making music for manic-depressive girls": Atmosphere
What a rock star. I am not kidding. With self-depricating lyrics, a sort of bigger-than-life, do-as-I-ask stage presence and flailing theatrics, this guy was all rock star.
As far as a show (but don't they throw parties? or was that just the Micranots... so confused) goes, it was [insert positive term here]. The audience was not only into it, they were duped into it. It was priceless. Mid-session, Mr. Dibbs (that DJ of his there), starts spinning and letting loose Rage Against the Machine's "Fuck You I Won't Do What You Tell Me". The liveliest the audience got all night (in your face, Micranots! Kidding. Sort of.). Anyway, after the stage diving and excitement from Rage settled, Slugs gets on the microphone and goes heart-to-heart with the audience, setting it up with the intent to tell them something personal. And then proceeds to point out the irony of the audience being told to (and complying with) yell along "Fuck You, I Won't Do What You Tell Me". A fault in his logic was that no one was told to yell along. Never. They just did, in a kind of youthful-uniformity that comes from attending highschool. There is a twist to the logic that wasn't really explored. Some kids may have picked up on it when they got back to Mom and/or Dad's place. Some kids will be bitter for the next week about the irony that Slugs said was being fed to them from the media because they themselves were duped into the web-of-irony. To which they are, again, eating what they are being fed. Oh, lord, have mercy on the Y generation! They know not the powers of AOL!
Did I enjoy myself? Probably on some analytical level. Was it a good enough show that the anti-hopper would recommend? Yes, just be sure to go in with a critical mind to what "the media" tell you, whether underground or otherwise.