We Review The Program: Day One
Five night Hip-Hop Extravaganza "The Program" began last night at 8:45pm, and we were in our pajamas eating stale Cheeto Puffs and drinking cheap red wine from the grocery store. What's that? Did you just call us a slacker journalist? Hardly -- we were watching the show on SyncLive, which streamed the entire show (plus soundcheck!) in surprisingly good video/audio quality. Once we figured out how to re-buffer the feed without refreshing the entire page, and once we'd established who exactly was watching the show online with us (there's a chat function!), we were happy, happy campers!! Up on night #1 in this five-night marathon of NW hiphop: Siren's Echo, Unexpected Arrival, Swollen Members, and Blue Scholars. A drunken Sonny Bonoho hosted, and DV-One djed between sets.
Siren's Echo, of Oldominion, is sassy, tough hiphop. One of the MCs, Toni Hill, has a rich and powerful singing voice, complete with control and range. Her deep, clear notes got the crowd excited, which is no small feat for an opener. These ladies are some of the first female MCs Seattlest has been able to truly enjoy live (not that we've seen many), and we're looking forward to hearing more from Toni and Syndel. Actually, we enjoyed Siren's Echo more than the next group, Unexpected Arrival, especially since Neema's voice gave out a couple of songs into his set. He hoarsely hollered through the last few tracks, which wasn't pleasant to listen to and didn't garner him many new fans; however, most of his a capella rhyming showed skill and certainly also showed Neema's drive to succeed. The energy definitely dipped during the set, from our perspective on the crowd. We wonder what Neema sounds like live when he's not all raspy and dry.
Photo via MySpace
Up next: a forty minute intermission while we waited for Canadian hiphop stars Swollen Members. It might as well have been a couple hours. DV-One did a masterful job spinning during the break, bringing up some old favorites and weaving some NW into his mix, but we were seriously antsy. Our feet started hurting in sympathy with those packed into Neumos. In the Synclive chat, many many jokes were made about Canadians and the border, and in Neumos there were various chants to try to magically transport Swollen Members onto the stage. When Swollen Members finally (finally!) showed, we didn't actually even like the set. What kind of hiphop uses the phrase "just too hot to trot"? Light, lean, forgettable hiphop, that's what kind. The music commits the mortal sin of being boring and a little girly, and it did NOT help that midway through the performance, the dreadlocked guys were joined by vapid dancing blonde girls. We'd heard good things about Swollen Members -- apparently they have a large fan base here in Seattle, and the crowd at Neumos was psyched to be jumping up and down to their music -- but Seattlest is not a fan.
And then: Blue Scholars. We preface this review by saying that we used to like Blue Scholars, and then we started listening to local hiphop in earnest and learned that we actually don't like Blue Scholars so much. Wearing nerdy clothes and ugly glasses to be ironic is not endearing; it is annoying, and we will not ever forgive the guys for introducing the trendy Muslim desert shawl to Seattle hiphop. Sabzi's got some great battle beats, and some not-so-great Blue Scholars beats, and last night Blue Scholars' okay beats were backed by a huge BAND. Yes. A full band, including trumpet, trombone, and tambourine (we think we saw a tambourine... it would not surprise us if there were a tambourine). After a few BS favorites, the set devolved into some kind of weird Latin big-band jam. It was un-hiphop. Are they going to be doing this every night? Please tell us no. Note to Geo: keep the hat, it's jaunty and we like it.
Join us at www.synclive.com around 9pm tonight to watch the show! Night #2 involves Can-U (Tacoma! Represent!), Sleep of Oldominion, D. Black, and the ubiquitous Blue Scholars. We're mostly excited about D. Black, who's been "on ice" for awhile; this will be his first performance in at least a couple months.
