Scream Tour Presents presents their third traveling R&B and rap show for tween and teen black girls, and the teen and tweens greatly appreciate the unthreatening peers and dancers give it their all to backing tapes for three hours. A relentlessly, too loud, badly, like terribly, sounding fistful of not quite big enough pop songs by bands who might break but might not. Plus headliner Diggy Simmons -who also doesn't have a band to sing with, but is a talented kid who should certainly crossover.
The audience at Best Buy on Saturday were real easy to break down. In the front very sweet natured girls, in the back their long suffering parents and I'm running between the two. I was there because… well because Diggy Simmons is Reverend Run's son so I gave his debut album Unexpected Arrival a closer listen than I might and liked some of it a lot. Headlining Diggy was easily the best thing about the night.
Before them you got two lousy r&b boys, two OK rappers, a girl rap band, a dance troupe dressed like chimpanzees, a couple of DJs, one of which was immensely annoying, and a dance competition. And, it is not even whether the music was good or bad, it might be baffling to hear 80s production values in 2012 but it isn't necessarily BAD, but just atrocious sound mixing. Till the girl rap band, OMG Girlz, hit the stage every damn song has the bass too high in the mix. Since this is ALL PRERECORDED TAPES, there is no excuse for it.
The show opened with one of the best acts, 14 year old Houston rapper Tre Buggs who only sang two songs but left a fine impression, especially "Twitter Lover" with its indelible "Rockin' Robin" sample. He was followed by dance crew Jungle Boogie of which all I have to say is I've seen better dancing at Washington Square Park on a Sunday afternoon. Young Money Cash Money (you know Lil Wayne's label) then introduced their latest find, Torion, who along with the other soul singer on the program, Juwan Harris, was immediately forgettable fake r&b. Except for Harris's "Another Planet" which has potential.
Much better was TKN N Cash, a throwback to old school rap, plugging their fine new EP Orentation They perform mini-sketches between raps and they are a boisterous duo with lots and lots (and lots) of dancing, like everybody else here, dancing is central., so important some acts spend more time dancing then singing letting backing tracks carry the songs. If it wasn't for an intensely irritating blasting a horn every two minutes by a twit DJ, it would have been very pleasurable. On record, they are much more serious. Performing between two lugubrious soul boys, TK N Cash made a fan of me.
OMG Girlz are sweet looking kids, the earliest incarnation included Lil Wayne's daughter, but they danced to backing tapes through the first ten minutes and blew any credibility they had with me. With two good songs, "Where The Boys At" and "Gucci This (Gucci That)" under their belt, and a nice stage manner about them, Beauty jumped off the stage to hug a fan who had a supportive sign with her, I ended up forgiving them for losing sight of their priorities. A rethinking of Inner Circle's "Bad Boys" was quite good.
As for Diggy Simmons -the kid is all backstory, stuck in an "Unforgivable Blackness" loop which he morphs into , "don't let anyone tell you you can't do it" feel good manta. "Why should I apologize for my father's wallet size?" he spends the evening wondering when not seducing girls. The title is from the Jack Johnson (the great black hope) bio, which, you gotta think, was maybe not the best idea Diggy ever had.
The set is excellent, Diggy's third tour to date so he knows how to work the stage, and in front of his friends and family so if he ever had something to prove, he did Saturday night. And he proved it fine. Blew everybody else off stage. The girls sang along to every word of "Four Letter Word" and "Do It Like You" and should have. But I have huge reservations with an act with no live music at all. The audience don't mind, and Simmons is a kinetic, electric performer, who should be usurping Mindless Behavior's position in the tween hop pantheon any day now, but you can't really prove it without a backup group. Rev Run? Yes. Diggy? Not so fast. Plus, when I saw his Daddy at MSG long before Diggy was born, he already had a full band behind Run DMC.
And having said all that, I am far from the target audience and the target audience love it. Still, their Grandparents had Motown and sitting in the back of Best Buy must have been thinking, "Ha! Where's Smokey when you need him?"Grade: B-
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