Earlier this week at Webster Hall I, and everyone enrolled in a summer course at NYU, saw a rap show featuring Wiz Khalifa, Green Street and Corleone.
I’m going to attribute last night’s NYU-ization to Green Street. The Boston-bred true school rap group is comprised of rapper A-Live and producer Renaissance. They both live in New York now, and they must sell pot out of their dorm room or something because they had millions of kids there, getting all crazy for them at 9:00 on a Tuesday. A good part of that hype was due to A-Live’s steady crowd work, as he constantly kept folks in the crowd engaged. They were backed by a live band and that seemed to go over well with the crowd, too. You can download Green Street’s mixtape Chess Moves at their website, and you should definitely just download it for free because they were selling the CD at the show for five hundred dollars.
Before Green Street went on, the DJ played Asher Roth’s “I Love College” and people revolted, booing and screaming for the DJ to turn it off. I thought to myself, if a room full of college kids seeing hip hop hate “I Love College” so much, what hope does Asher Roth have of maintaining a career?
The highlight of Corleone’s set was bringing A-Live back up on stage for a feature. The main problem with Corleone, and most rap groups at their level that I see around town, is how incredibly safe they play it. They were capable rappers and their beats were solid, but there was never a weird beat, never a vocal change in rhythm or tone, no clever lines, no surprises.
Wiz Khalifa was a pro and had tons of energy the whole night and was able to move and rap at the same time, which is rare in hip hop. His set was short but solid, featuring a whole bunch of heaters from his mixtape Flight School, including, “Boarding Pass”, “Shame”, “Sky High”, “Teach U to Fly” and the a cappella track “Wassup”. It was crazy because I saw a lot of people in the crowd who knew every line Wiz rapped. On a personal note, Wiz Khalifa is the skinniest human to ever live. I thought I was watching The Machinist.
It occured to me while watching the show that I have Flight School but never posted it for some reason, so please take it upon yourselves to download the tape now because it is really one of the most solid mixtapes to come out in a while.
[audio:https://imposemagazine.com/photos/2009/07/07-7-get-sum.mp3] [audio:https://imposemagazine.com/photos/2009/07/04-4-shame.mp3]Download Flight School here.
