“Practice. We talking ‘bout practice.” –Allen Iverson
With all the hoopla of Michael’s passing we,you, and everybody has seen hours of video and concert footage of Michael for the last 40 years. When he was on the stage Mike never seemed like he was giving less than his best. All 
the footage of the man in concert shows a performer that obviously took time AND practice to give people the best possible show. What’s my point?
A lot of you rap Negroes need to get a show!!! I mean really some of y’all need to work something out. Lock yourself in ya momma’s basement, get ya boys, ya DJ and whoever else will be appearing on the stage with you and get together a show.
Over the last 3-4 weeks I have seen Smiff & Wesson, Slum Village, Slaughter House, 5 Ela, One Belo, Finale, Reflection Eternal (Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek), Tech N9Ne, Big Boi, The Roots, and Nas & Damien Marley.
These shows have ranged from huge outdoor venues like Rock the Bells in Detroit to low key club joints in Miami so the names you probably don’t recognize are underground and independent cats I checked out.
Now check the list one mo’gin and guess who had the best show. Nope. Ya picked wrong. Tech N9Ne. What? Well depending how old you are and where you live you’re either like Hell YEAH! Tech N9Ne! OR (like me a few weeks ago) Tech Who? Now I had seen the brother’s name before, but had never checked out the music. Still because of a hot performance me and my skeptical friends actually had to pay attention, and might pick up a single or at LEAST take a listen to an album. HE had a show. A few dance moves, great transitions from one song to the next, and rapport with the crowd. He was so filled with energy it was contagious.
Tech was part of Rock the Bells and even though there were bigger acts, he stole the show. Don’t get me wrong the Roots were top notch (the crowd wanted an encore) and Big Boi (sans 3000) was VERY good. But they’re SUPPOSED to be good. They’ve got hits and years of experience. Nas and Damien Marley performed together and had surprisingly good chemistry (never underestimate the power of having a band). But the rest?
REEEEEEFUND please. Yes, Reflection Eternal just got back together but fellas PLEAZE work out something. Slum Vee, Detroit natives, should have had the home-court advantage since we were in Michigan – NOPE.
But the absolute worse of the worse was Slaughter House a so-called “super group” of Joe Budden, Royce da 5’9, Joell Ortiz, and Crooked I. Side note: Just because everybody has a deal and made a video does not a super group make. They came out hype to Budden’s big hit “Pump It Up”, did Royce’s song “Boom” and then literally stopped and looked at each other. They appeared dumbfounded like literally what we goin do now? Budden was like “Hey Y’all, the man say we got 15 minutes left. Anybody got a cigarette?” Then proceeded to smoke and pace the stage. Well, they did bust some freestyles.
But back to Tech. What really put him over the top, what really made the group I was with give him some dap (truly GROWNheadz if you will) was his Michel Jackson shout-out wait excuse me, TRIBUTE. Yeah everybody else was hollering, “Peace to MJ!” and “Show some love for Michael Jackson y’all.” Tech took it a step further. In the middle of his show, all of a sudden his DJ dropped the instrumental to Billie Jean. Tech and his boy slid into a slight Motown 25 reenactment (moonwalk et al) and busted a freestyle over the beat. THAT’S how you show love for an artist , remain up to the moment AND give the crowd their money’s worth.
ANYway all that to say, and I quote AI, “Practice, we talking ‘bout practice.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
interesting write up. let me throw my two cents in just to get things moving, and prove that i do actually check out the website.
For some reason, I was under the impression that Allen’s quote about practice was him actually down playing the importance of practice. I recall a skit about “sports greatest…. something’s” on Versus about how many times he actually said the word “practice” (12-1/2 times i think!)
Anyway, i have been to few hip hop shows and i will say none of them were anything more than the artist coming out with the group, entourage or whoever with a t-shirt, some jeans and a bottle of water ready to spit some versus (and throw water on the crowd). You’re pointing out an expectation that is completely different from myself and one i reserved for other genre’s of music. Though i’ve heard Common put’s on a great show, I have come to think that outside of hype men such as DMX and Swizz Beatz; moguls like Jay-Z and Nas (in which the crowd is just excited to be there); hip-hop concerts involve the artist coming on stage, running through their greatest hits and putting out a few unheard free styles.
I’m not sure if cartwheels and synchronized dance go well with the image/persona hip-hop artists try to portray.
Though I must say, it would’ve been great to see the Notorius Big in his signature gangster pen stripe suit and a baller hat doing synchronized spins, slides, pop-locking and the like in between the versus of “Gimme the Loot”!
Hey, Heavy D could do it!