The Live Show Will Never Die—I Think
4 Writers on the live performance that stuck with them this summer
This is a Rap Show
By Alphonse
Cuco is spinning a DJ set of ambient music. The crowd is all smiles at MOMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, sipping on 10 dollar IPAs and 12 dollar gentrified nutcrackers. There must be a uniform today: pastel shorts and Sperrys. I see one guy in a pair of Off-White Vapor Maxes, but he’s also wearing a polo shirt tucked in—collar popped. That’s drip.
Where’s the food? I see the food, past the hammocks. A 12 dollar hot dog, just what I wanted. Let me go back near the stage. People are in large groups, back to the DJ, in conversation and taking IG pics. They’re happy to be here, their first summer in New York. It’s what they wanted. Cuco is leaving the stage, it’s time to figure out if I’m actually in the right place to see Canarsie rapper Pop Smoke perform his first full set.
He emerges. His blue flannel is caught in the wind like a cape, and the white tank top poking out from underneath makes him look like he could fit in with Jim Jones’ crew during the “We Fly High” era. Pop Smoke tugs on his Amiri Jeans, purposely, I think; he wants us to see them—not that the crowd knows the difference between Amiri and Lee Jeans. He performs a short, 15-minute set of his current New York street hits: “Meet the Woo,” “Welcome to the Party,” and “Dior.” Oh shit, Pop Smoke can really rap. He does that thing when rappers cut the beat and go a capella, nobody ever wants to hear that, but it doesn’t make me want to abandon the set. I’m not sure if the crowd knows him. Some do, they twirl a bit, and a few are in a trance realizing that they’re witnessing the current peak of Brooklyn drill right in front of their eyes. After the 15 minutes end, Pop Smoke dips, and the attendees turn and resume their conversations like they just sat through the bizarre trampoline halftime show at a Knicks game. Pop Smoke’s fanbase in Brooklyn is massive, but he had journey all the way to Queens for a crowd that can’t properly hop a subway turnstile. Is this what rap shows in New York are like now? I’m not mad, because I know Pop Smoke isn’t. He got his check, and disappeared back into the New York streets. At least now he probably knows what an IPA is.
Vlone Tees
Unknowingly, during my summer in NY pretending to do some real music journalism™, I ended up buying a ticket to New York’s largest (and first) Vlone x Marino Infantry convention. OK yes, that was just a way to say that I went to an A$AP Ant concert. And again yes, that A$AP Ant. The one who ripped all enjoyment from “Bath Salt.” But it’s OK—Ant, makes the best music in the mob now.
Tickets were $15. Doors opened at 9. I don’t think the venue let anyone in before 10:15. When I finally got in, I sat through Slimesito and an onslaught of openers (Why did he let ASAP Ty Y do a set?!). The entire Marino Gang got some time on stage. All of this happened before Ant found his way to the mic at midnight. I’d never been to an A$AP show before and I got to experience a crowd of white Off-White wearing teenagers that knew every single word to leaked Carti tracks and recited them all while bouncing in the moshpit abyss. It was magical.
Of course, since this show went on in the midst of Rocky’s Swedish imprisonment, there were several opportunities to join in on “FUCK SWEDEN!” chants. Ant himself said he’d never wear another piece from Acne Studios because of Rocky’s imprisonment. I don’t think that’s true, but it sounded cool as fuck so I rock with it. 8/10 concert purely because they taught me about rare Marino shirts.
The Dreamville Fam
By Regina Cho
On the Fourth of July, Brooklyn decided to celebrate independence in the best way it knew how: a J. Cole day party at the Brooklyn Mirage. Cole and his Dreamville cohorts made up for the agony they had been putting fans through with the constant “ROTD3 dropping...” pump fake tweets by creating a day full of life —the project was released later that night. As someone who has seen Cole live 11 times—from his tiny $1 shows back in 2013, to a sold out Dreamville Fest in North Carolina—the Brooklyn Mirage show was a reminder that witnessing Cole on his journey is rewarding. Cole began his set with his triple platinum hit “MIDDLE CHILD,” but he still felt like the rapper who hadn’t yet sold out Madison Square Garden. Head honcho Ibrahim set up shop on stage behind the boards to man the 1’s and 2’s, and with every song change the two would smile and point like school bus drivers while passing each other en route, and Cole would hit him with a: “What you got next, Ib?” It’s been a decade and success hasn’t changed a thing. I was still shoulder-to-shoulder, clinging onto every word, back with my Dreamville family.
I Got Scammed By Teejayx6
It seemed like a given that some shit was going to go down at Teejayx6’s first L.A. show. The scam-rap phenom had us all worried from the start that stepping into the same room as him meant we’d end up on an IRS watch list.
I arrived early, so the night started with calls from the Rarehouse venue organizer to a room of less than 15 people to start moshing to KA5H’s opening DJ set, or he was going to kick us out. KA5H was followed by a DC something, who rapped decently, over a bunch of plug beats before Lil Housephone and his crew took to the stage. Housephone got the crowd (nearly everyone was a photographer?!) to do some light moshing. The highlight of his set though was when he took a solemn moment to reflect and told us about how much the Dayton and El Paso shootings affected him, so he wanted to make a song to honor the victims. Then he ripped the tension off the room when the DJ dropped the Owl City “Fireflies” beat, to which Housephone belted “WHEN I LOOK IN WHITE PEOPLE’S EYES, I GET THOSE SCHOOL SHOOTER VIBES.”
The stage was then evacuated for all the Detroit dudes who popped out one-by-one from behind a metal garage door, drawn halfway down behind the stage. Drego and Beno hopped out to perform a few songs. They started with “Slatt Season,” hitting the exact sort of languid, rolling dance moves from all of their videos, rocking their hands back and forth while the crowd chanted, “Dawg, get off my ass” like a religious hymn. Drego, whose face looks even thinner in person, was rapping with the laser-like focus of someone executing a complex heist. Every bar was delivered like he was aiming it directly at someone. After a few more songs full of incredible little jigs, Drego gave a short sermon as the elder statesman of Detroit rap, despite being barely of legal drinking age.
Soon enough, Teejayx6 walked out, understandably nervous. He started with “Profiles,” pacing the stage and holding the mic low as he leaned down in to it with folded arms. He rapped every word of the 2.5 songs he performed, barely coming up for breath. We were all just visitors as he walked us through a tour of his convoluted schemes to get more iPhones and SSNs. Between songs chants of “Scam My Bitch” broke out, to which Teejay flashed a boyish, 18-year-old laugh and said, “Y’all on some bullshit tonight.” He continued with “Dark Web,” while photographer elbows kept hitting me in the head as they searched for better angles.
The show had a chilled out vibe, like we were all meditating on the performance, so absorbed in the music that it felt like visiting a rare Egyptian art gallery, trying to decipher the hieroglyphics. Then, suddenly halfway into Teejay’s third song, two dudes in blue U.S. Marshal jackets stormed into the venue, flashed their badges, jumped on-stage and had Teejay put his hands on his head. Boos rained over the room as the “Marshals” ushered him out. People followed Teejay and the “Marshals” outside the venue as they shoved him into an unmarked sedan. They took off toward a dead-end with shitty green and orange lights flashing behind. Teejay was gone as fast as he had arrived.
Every one of the 40 or so photographers in the building captured the moment and when it hit socials, had every rapper, producer, and hip-hop head online wondering if the incident was real or if Teejay is just a genius marketer. Whispers from the crowd ranged from: “This is a genius police plot, they’ve been tracking him for years, and finally hit him in a place they knew for a fact he’d be,”—like they were the Nazis searching for the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music—to “Marshals?? That’s some serious shit.” Later in a video, I could see one of the “cops” aggressively yell at everyone to back up and gum comically fly out of his mouth as Teejay halfheartedly squirms in the car. Internet sleuths quickly found a fake “Deputy Burke” for hire in L.A. who matched with one of the “Marshals” shortly thereafter, adding more evidence to the suspicion—the same actor was found in a Joey Fatts music video.
Now, everyone is sure it was staged. He only had to perform 2.5 songs, but you better believe he got that performance money up front. Teejay scammed me out of a concert and I still left feeling like it was the best show I’d been to all year.
S/o Dani Blum for help w/ words