What a hot mess of privileged white highschool boys. Let me just say this, during the set-up of a concert don't start a mosh pit or crowdsurf. Sure, at some concerts you could totally do that when the show has started when the music is energizing... but not during the random play-lists for setup.
When it gets to the point where I have to constantly watch out for falling bodies it has gone too far. At the GZA concert tonight high school boys were causing complete mayhem and instead of punching someone's kidneys like I wanted to I ended up literally pulling a kid down from the overhead crowdsurfing position, got in his face and said, "You need to cut that shit out, it's fucking retarded!" This was before the somewhat horrible opener who I believe had lyrics like, "V.T. Money! V.T. Money! Na-na-na-na-naa!" There's just something really passionate about hip-hop and rap that I think some artists lack, no matter how hard they try.
Part of the concert experience is to blend with the crowd and become a homogeneous flowing pool of bodies, but when I felt like the oldest person in the room excluding the artists in front of us my position shifts from having a great time to being pissed off because of the juveniles surrounding me. Hip hop an art form that expresses the frustrations of society and race, class, politics... real heavy shit. When someone's greatest concern in life is finally growing chest hair or losing their virginity I just cannot believe they can truly appreciate the depths of the lyrics. I think you have to suffer a little bit to have some real passion and true understanding of hardship, and looking around me tonight I felt like I was surrounded by a mess of white inheritance progeny.
It was such an uplifting time compared to my last experience with him on stage, where he was OPENING for GIRL TALK. What kind of crazy city do we live in when someone who is being sampled by the headliner opens the show... when someone is used in a mash-up by Girl Talk it is because they are clearly so insanely famous/recognizable that sampling from them justifies their good musicianship but also establishes a hierarchy of fame. If you're curious about where and what tracks this happens *check this out!* If you sync up the videos so that Girl Talk's "What's It All About" is at 2 mins 30 secs, and Wu Tang's "C.R.E.A.M." is at 27 secs you can hear the sample used. Anyway, somehow Cornell University had their shit mixed up, and allowed Girl Talk to supersede the natural order of life.
Regardless of all of the crazy bullshit, GZA performed so well. He really pumped up the crowd by playing solid tracks, and crowdsurfing himself or walking in the mess of people. At one point he staged a rap battle amongst some of the audience members... one of them had the balls to take a sip from his drink, which didn't go over well at all, obviously. However, after battling to get to the front I lucked out and he actually pulled me towards the stage holding my hand, then cupped my cheek in his hands. I nearly died being so close to the Genius himself. What an amazing night.
If yall want to check out a really interesting interview from 2002, where the Genius sat down with Kevin Beacham to discuss the path to Wu-Tang and the origins of a great MC *click this link!*
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