Samples, rhythms, beats, lots of them, plus some attitude (nice) and plenty of enthusiasm, the hip-hop duo, People Under the Stairs, gave to the people packed between the CDs rows at Amoeba, what they were waiting for.
I don’t listen to hip-hop, I guess I am too old for that (Editors Note: The first rap show I went to was in 1980 -it isn't an age thing) , and I feel not qualified enough about the genre to talk about it, but I was fascinating to see how much some (young) people were into Double K and Thes One’s mix of laid-back swagger and verbal diarrhea,… but don’t all hip-hop guys speak like this anyway? Still, these two guys know how to set up a party as their performance seemed to be a friendly house party with a lot of booze and marijuana. In front of a few turntables, the two guys elevates the positive-energy level in a few minutes, and more than their bouncing beats, more than the good-old-style hip-hop music they were performing, it was the happy-humor vibe they filled up the store with, that mattered.
They were celebrating the release of their 8th album ‘Highlighter’, but they played old tunes too and even asked for requests (like this old one, ‘San Francisco Knights’) from the very-willing-to-participate crowd. It was actually very funny to see them interact with the audience, making people sing on ‘Selfish destruction’, seeing a baby in the crowd and more or less improvising about him, seeing a guy front row drinking a beer and starting a song about beers.
‘We support taxes for the wealthy so we can buy more beers!’ said Thes One. And if ‘Party time is anytime’ and ‘having fun’ seemed to summarize pretty well their philosophy, they were at the same time declaring they were 100% behind teachers who were making a difference,… aaawww thanks guys! Although, I am not sure this illegal-substance-song of yours would be teacher-approved.
I should have counted the number of times they dropped ‘Amoeba’ in their singings, and the crowd could not restrain itself when there was something close to ‘I heard on the news this morning they fucked up Kadafi’ launched over some cool beats
It was Thes One’ s birthday two days before, so they appropriately sang their new song ‘Too Much Birthday’, jumping, arms in the air, advertising for their upcoming show at the El Rey Theater.
The Los Angeles duo is the most successful fully independent hip-hop duo in the history of Hip-Hop, having self-managed, produced and engineered all their full-length albums, singles and side projects.
For someone who doesn’t listen to hip-hop, I found their familial performance quite entertaining, as each song, old or new, was received with the same wide-eye enthusiasm by the crowd. What can I say, they sounded like really cool guys you want to invite at your private party.
Comments are closed.