Photo Credit: Michael Joffe
Four white boys at a hip-hop show. It sounds like the plot of a really bad sitcom – or at the very least, a good episode of Two and a Half Men (if you watch that show, then shame on you) – but that was the case last Monday, when my three friends and I made the trek down to the Sound Academy. The occasion? None other than one of the Wu-Tang’s finest, Gary Grice, or GZA as he’s best known to most people. Throw in support from one of Canada’s finest DJs, Skratch Bastid, and you have a hell of a party in the making.
It was just too bad that the party took so long getting started.
I guess I shouldn’t have so surprised that there was a lot of waiting. It was a rap show afterall. What did surprise me however, was just how subpar the other opening acts were. The first group up were a bunch of scrawny white guys from Ottawa, playing instantly forgettable rap-rock with rhymes about government mind control and marijuana (of course). Note to up-and-coming bands: if you are lucky enough to get an opening gig like this, at least dress the part – backwards ball caps and oversized clothing straight out of the 90s don’t count.
Luckily the bad taste in the crowd’s mouthes disappeared, at least temporarily, when it came time for Skratch Bastid to take to the decks. The Halifax-born DJ, whose real name is Paul Murphy, first made a splash when he won the 2003 Scribble Jam and hasn’t looked back since. He’s won international DJ competitions (numerous times), was the first Canadian DJ to be nominated for a Juno award (for producing Buck 65′s Situation), and has shared the stage with the likes of Nas, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Ludacris, Mix Master Mike, Ice-T, DJ Premier, Modeselektor, The Tragically Hip, Russell Peter, and more. Thanks to the Sound Academy’s video projectors, the audience could watch Bastid’s technical wizardry on the turntables, as he cut up, scratched, looped, seamlessly mixed and blended choice cuts from everyone from Beastie Boys to James Brown to Major Lazer (dropping Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” into the set was a nice touch as well). Perhaps more importantly, you could tell that the DJ was having fun, and his positive energy was reflected in the crowd.
With the crowd properly hyped up from Bastid’s set, everyone was expecting GZA to be onstage next. Instead the mood was killed by some Wu-Tang-affiliated posse that were all talk and little action. To say it was a bit of a buzz kill would be a gross understatement.
Finally at a quarter to midnight, GZA took to the stage, to frenzied chanting and a sea of hands raised in the infamous “W” sign. Even if you aren’t a hip-hop fan, you have to see GZA perform live once in your life. For starters, the man is a musical pioneer. Without GZA and rest of the Wu-Tang Clan, there’d be no Kanye or Just Blaze-produced songs with chopped up and/or sped or slowed down soul samples, no street narratives about growing up tough and slinging drugs from Jay-Z or Nas, not to mention all the street and kung-fu slang that the group has contributed to the hip-hop lexicon. For those that thought the seminal New York City hip-hop crew were running out of things to say, than last year proved that the Wu-Tang Clan still ain’t nuthing to fuck wit. The group’s core members were everywhere in 2009: Ghostface Killah lent vocals to MSTRKRFT’s “Word Up”, The Black Keys’ BlakRoc project featured contributions from RZA and a posthumous verse from Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Raekwon put out one of the year’s best and most anticipated rap albums, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II. As for the most “senior” Clansman, he showed up in all manner of unexpected places, from appearing on my favourite song of the year, to playing one of the best shows (and free nonetheless!) of this year’s NXNE festival. The man is a convivial showman and knows how to give the his audience exactly what they want. The rapper wasted no time tearing through choice cuts from his second album, Liquid Swords, like “Duel Of The Iron Mic” and the title track (with its chilling “He cut off the heads off one hundred and thirty-one lords” sample from the samurai movie Shogun Assasin), before treating the crowd to Wu-Tang favourites, “Clan In Da Front” being among the standouts.
All in all, a solid show to a diverse crowd, that included skate punks, tokers, diehard Wu-Tang fans, and one unfortunate-looking hipster kid. Hopefully the next time GZA plays Toronto, it’s with less filler acts (Skratch Bastid not included), not on a Monday night (seriously Sound Academy booking agents, what the hell were you thinking?), and above all, with far, far less waiting around.
