I’d been meaning to check out a show at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins, CO for a long-ass time, largely because I’m sick of driving to Denver; I figured it’d be a lot easier to take the dreaded “You’re not on the list” conversation if I hadn’t just driven an hour-and-change out of my way. It’s too bad, however, that I had to pop my Aggie cherry on such a strange concert. There’s no doubt the Ag’ has the space, live sound, and “pull” to bring in good bands and good fans, so seeing such a wildly inconsistent show has left me blaming rappers and/or rap in general.
A few notes to rappers interested in putting on concerts:
• Don’t scratch unless you can scratch cleanly; that fingernails-on-chalkboard warble sounds like dogshit.
• The one thing you should never, ever do is let your buddy/buddies sit on the side of the stage diddling a Blackberry while you do your thing. Between Jasmine Solano and Wiz Khalifa, there were 3-4 people onstage who not only looked bored, but were also somehow able to transMIT their boredom to all in attendance. When I see a 350-pound tour-bus driver on the side of the stage, flanked by some chick straight off a rugby-team bus and a scrawny white kid in a backpack — who looks so starstruck my wife thought he was Elijah Wood; I corrected her by reasoning, “There’s no WAY Elijah-fucking-Wood would (HA!) be standing on the side of the stage like a giddy vagrant; there’s just no way” — I assume the rapper(s) are needy. Rappers should never appear needy. Ditch the entourage!
• You don’t have to make the crowd sit around for FOUR HOURS; if the concert is listed to start at 8PM, at least BE IN THE BUILDING by the time 11PM rolls around.
• If some white kid — whose shitty rap group probably just got done opening for you — yells, “Get off the stage,” you gotta sink your FANGs into that motherfucker.
• Between-jam circumlocution is the lowest form of time-passing.
Now that I’m done giving pointers, I’ll jump into the review. Jasmine Solano takes the stage after a few unmentionable white rappers “kill it” (“it” being my boner for white-guy rap). She plays a few records. Eventually, she shows us she can do something worthwhile by bringing out U-God of The Wu-Tang Clan. I am ready for a set that hits the brain like “Cocaine straight from Bolivia,” and what I get is an unsure performance from a flu-addled rapper more suited to being a sideman. I can see he feels passionately about his music, and the aforementioned jeer directed at him (“Get off the stage”) gets him pumped-up enough that he dares anyone to take him off, but his set carries with it the feeling of inertia, of not knowing what to do now that the hype has thoroughly passed him by. And if you’re going to do medley-esque snippets, why not hit-up your slot on Only Built For Cuban Linx or Enter the 36 Chambers? I don’t get it.
Wiz Khalifa? Now that man knows how to work a crowd. Not only that, but he’s young and tattoo’d, just as a rapper should be. No nostalgia trips here; this is the sound of a young man who has figured out his style to the tip-top “T.” His charisma is as apparent as his booming, easy-to-understand voice; I almost forgive his entourage I’m so into it. I love the way his voice slippery-slides over the beats, like Nelly, 50 Cent, and a half-dozen Southern rappers had sex with each other and birthed one pure, destined golden child. What a bad-ass (and I don’t use the term “bad-ass” lightly; not at all).
I should mention that, at one point, I noticed Khalifa lip-syncing. Yeah, that’s right: He took the mic away from his mouth and the rapping continued. It wasn’t on a chorus, either. Was he faking the funk? I’d rather not examine it because I really don’t know; it’s possible parts of the show were canned, it’s possible just that one snippet was. I do know what I saw though; take note and hold rappers to their mics! If Khalifa ever does iron-out this discouraging hiccup (that hiccup being, ahem, a partial lack of actual rapping), there’s really no telling how high his wicked brew of weed tales, tattoo declarations, and trash-talk can take him, even in a live setting rap so-often fails to take advantage of.