Music Review

I wrote a live music review for a website so I can exert some creative energy. I chose a Raekwon show I saw a few weeks ago. The review is below.

First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Atop a dingy tiled platform, raised a couple of feet off the floor, the mood is relatively raucous but awkwardly still. In front of a sold out crowd in the basement of Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church, a former Wu-Tang lyricist is about to give the crowd what they’ve been chanting for all night. “Cash Rules Everything Around Me,” the Brooklyn native mumbles into the mic. The RZA’s xylophone-laced beat kicks in and hundreds of raised hands throw up the W. Through a cloud of smoke, Raekwon steps on stage.

It is both fitting and ironic that the most street-wise, criminologist of the Wu-Tang Clan is performing in a sepia-tinted basement littered with empty Pabst cans and Philly blunt wrappers, while an active Unitarian church sits idle a few feet above the audience’s head. It is in DIY venues like this that have helped Raekwon propel himself into the hip-hop/indie limelight that he now swaggers in.

Before he even steps on stage it is clear who the night belongs to. Despite Philly native, Reef the Lost Cauze bobbing the heads of his hometown crowd, Rae chops ‘em off. Opening his set with classics like “C.R.E.A.M” the crowd of a few hundred is ready to follow the “Chef” down a lyrical alleyway of grimy, Mafioso wordplay and street jargon. Lumbering from side to side in a black flat cap, pulled low over his eyes, Rae rattles off verse after verse from his new album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II.

A haunting loopy soul beat kicks off “House of Flying Daggers,” one of the singles off the Billboard chart topper. The crowd nods up and down reciting word for word Rae’s tribute to the sinister dealings of the rise of a mafia boss, broken up only by the occasional W in the sky or toke on the devil’s lettuce. Other crowd favorites like “10 Bricks” and the Dr. Dre produced steel drum shaker “Catalina” has Rae’s fans simmering in the already muggy atmosphere.

It is a night of disbelief. A collision of peculiar artist, venue, audience, and ambiance. The type of show where you feel like you should shower afterwards, but honestly don’t want to. And once the Chef has finished off the last morsel of a RZA infused instrumental, he ambles off the stage in triumph, through the same cloud of smoke he entered.

Music Review, check.