Where In The World Is Joe Budden?

(Sigh)

Peter Jackson

Do you know what they call cigarettes in the UK? That’s right. Peter Jacksons. Derivative and dull, the best part about Mr. Jackson’s set was that it ended. A personal request for the future: do not rap over Know The Ledge. Please. You know nothing of ledges. If you did, you’d have noticed that the DJ and Fortune’s Mecha-Godzilla-ass sound system had whipped the capacity crowd into a frenzy and had them teetering. All it would’ve taken was a nudge by a semi-competent rapper to send them over that ledge, and have every person in that room getting’ the fuck down hard, instead of re-stocking on beer or un-stocking on piss. It’s somewhat our fault I suppose. Bad timing. If we had hit more red lights on the way to Fortune Sound Club this past Thursday night, we may have dodged this debacle. In hindsight, I should thank you, Pete. I no longer want anything to do with smoking.

Pharoahe Monch

Petey had maimed the crowd with his mediocrity, but couldn’t even finish that job. Sensing a spark of life to exploit, Pharoahe stomped onto stage with conviction and commanded the crowd to rise. Whoa, whoa, whoa. He didn’t say Simon Says! Disregarding game rules, the crowd stood at attention and saluted Monch while he drill sergeanted the stage. His mic/breath control, projection, delivery and presence were exactly what I expected from my #9 of all time MC. Accompanied by the hypest hypeman ever, The Tasmanian Devil. Uhh, I mean Showtyme. You’ll forgive my mistake I’m sure. Until I saw my sidekick Jay’s photographs of the show, I had no idea what he looked like. All I saw was a tornado chewing the stage up and spitting out debris in between impassioned choruses. Mugging Nate Dogg, he made the hook of Oh No his own, and absolutely stole My Life out from under Pharoahe. It was around this point that some people around me noted, with each song, Pharoahe seemed a little more tired, a little less monstrous. He was beginning to struggle with breath, going for water a little more, allowing the crowd to fill in larger chunks of his verses. Which was ok. We were already rapping along to every word and more than happy to help out. It was a little disheartening, however, seeing one of my larger-than-life heroes shrink a little in stature to mere-mortal-size. I don’t know if it was because we were near the end of their tour, and they wore themselves out in the other cities. Whatever. The crowd had a buzz on and was in a forgiving mood. Then, it happened. That familiar, menacing Godzilla sample. The moment every motherfucker up in that piece was waiting for “…Duhn-duhn-duhn-duhn…Get The Fuck Up…Simon Says Get The Fuck Up!” Pharoahe gave that shit everything he had in the opening chorus. The place exploded, every arm in the air trying to raise that roof in unison and…DJ cuts the beat? The standard,“We can’t hear you Vancouver” moment designed to make the crowd get louder. Though he again didn’t say ‘Simon Says’, we obeyed. The DJ reset the record and away we…nope. Pharoahe gave it so hard during the fake first chorus that he lost his voice. On his biggest, best song, the perfect culmination of his high-energy set. He struggled valiantly at first, fighting through the rasp, but eventually had to get the crowd and Showtyme to finish off his lines and…show’s over?! Did he even do the second verse?! The whole crowd now knew what being on the receiving end of a premature ejaculation felt like. “That’s it?” Might as well have a smoke now. We just got fucked.

Slaughterhouse

You guys may’ve realized from the title of this post what I had no idea of until the Slaughterhouse set began: Joe Budden, one of the four members of the underground super-group, was not in attendance. Not just one of the members, my second favourite, next to Royce Da 5’9”. I didn’t catch an explanation, but the usual culprit in hip hop no-shows is the pig-nazis at the Canada/US border. Royce began the set alone with the slow-build of my favourite Slaughterhouse track, (and this music column’s namesake), Sound Off, before being joined on stage, one at a time, by the other two (Joell Ortiz and Crooked I) as their verses came in. Honestly, I don’t know if it was the disappointment from how Pharoahe’s set ended, the fact that Joe Budden wasn’t there, or the fact that Peter Jackson was, but I was pretty unimpressed. I saw Slaughterhouse (all 4 of ‘em) at Rock The Bells last summer, and it was a funny, fast-paced and flawless set. In short: they killed it! On this evening, the only thing slaughtered was my motivation to watch the rest. There were high points. They were dynamic in both delivery and presence, and tried to involve the crowd (although the first chick Royce asked to get on stage turned him down…awkward.) Joell was actually probably the most consistent, never standing still and spitting everything well. All three were crystal clear on the mic, though that may be due again to an assist from the cyborg-assassin/speakers, and in spite of Crooked I’s attempt to get alcohol poisoning. My biggest problem, I think, was this: if you actually added up the amount time spent on songs versus the amount of time spent on interludes either building up to songs or rambling about nothing, the latter would win. The set cut off strangely too, and they left the stage as the DJ played a song off their album called Salute. A song that has a Pharoahe Monch chorus. So, Slaughterhouse is there. Pharoahe Monch is there. And they play the song on record rather than perform it?! I got a one-fingered salute for that. Somehow four dudes on stage seemed less claustrophobic and disorganized than three, and I think this proves, with some groups, every member is vital. Not Wham or Hall & Oates or Bill & Ted, per se. But definitely with Slaughterhouse. Royce said it himself in the aforementioned Sound Off, “Joe Budden is the pair legs, he runs shit alongside I, the apparent head.” So, essentially, we saw Slaughterhouse in a wheelchair.

As you were,

– Nuv