We Review: Macklemore and A Million Other Hiphop Artists @ Chop Suey on Friday

Hoo-eee, was Chop Suey's stage packed on Friday night! Promised: Macklemore, Gabriel Teodros, Rajnii, Language Arts, Knowmads, Hella Maze, and DJ Marc Sense. Performed: all of the above, plus XPerience, Khingz, and some group called 2012. Sometimes it can be exhilarating and refreshing to have so many artists jumping on and off stage in one night. In this case, it was confusing and overwhelming, and we hardly know where to start when telling you about the night. Mostly, everyone was very loud and there was a lot of yelling. Not every hip-hop night can be an awesome hip-hop night.

A quick round-up: Knowmads remind us of the bands our church youth group would hire to play for us at camp, except those groups weren't allowed to refer to weed. And refer to weed the Knowmads did, over and over and over, in Brooklyn-accented rants; the mostly under-age crowd was loving it. They struck us as boringly limited in lyrical and musical scope, but then again we are not seventeen and pot is not what we think of as the epitome of thoughtful rebellion. We preferred the open, fresh, grittier sound of 2012, out of Tacoma, backed by DJ WD4D. Rajnii and Language Arts' work was inconsistent, hyper, and busy, but when it was good, it was very very good. At least we weren't wincing, which we definitely were doing when Hella Maze and a couple female MCs were working the stage. Seattlest really wanted to like it, since good female MCs are hard to find, but we found their rap shrill and their energy scrappy and over-eager. Teodros and Khingz did three or four songs, but weren't quite as on top of their game as usual. Gabriel Teodros opens up a room, though, and his performance was both skillful and warm.

Thank God for Macklemore! This dude has impeccable timing, and he actually listens and responds to the crowd. We like his lyrics and his straight-forward, "be yourself" message. When XP joined him, the set got hot -- those two have amazing chemistry on stage, the one enhancing the other and vice versa. Macklemore's going on tour, and he deserves to have a national fan base all to himself, but Stepcousins -- the name he and XP take when they perform together -- has all the ingredients for huge success. Oddly, Chop Suey had thinned out noticeably by the time Mack actually got on stage. Too late for the all-ages crowd? Who took their fans with them when they left the stage? It was weird. Ah, well. Apart from Macklemore's set, the dependably good stuff from Gabriel Teodros, and those refreshing tracks from 2012, this hiphop show left Seattlest lukewarm and half-wishing we'd stayed at the Comet to catch "Awesome".

Photo of Macklemore courtesy of MySpace, shot by Ryan Lewis.