Move The Crowd! AKA The One Where Dart Bitches About Wack Ass Stage Shows

Back in the days it was customary for anyone that dared call themself an emcee (at least an elite one) to have the ability to perform a stage show that could satisfy a paying audience. This was partly due to the fact that every crew or emcee at that time relied on rocking shows or parties to gain their individual reputations. They all came up in the hip hop culture’s version of apprenticeships. You rocked the junor high school and high school dances and later moved up to the block parties and clubs, if you held it down in the club scene long enough, sooner or later someone would approach you to record with/for them. This process often took years to come to fruition and during it crews or emcees would clash with or battle/compete against the other elite emcees/crews on their way to earning a following, respect and a firm position entrenched in the world of hip hop. You knew that if you went to a show and saw a particular line up on a flyer that the show (and the sound system) would be rockin’.

This process ensured that 90-95% of all the acts that recorded the early hip hop records had the art of the stage show down to a science by the time a label sought them out or signed them. The issue was, could you take the energy, excitement and grandeur of a hip hop stage show and replicate it on a record? Could you take what Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Treacherous Three, Cold Crush Brothers, The Fantastic Five, Crash Crew, Afrikaa Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force and Funky Four Plus One More did live in a 3 hour set and condense it to 4 or 5 minutes and still have people feel it? The world has since turned upside down. The first question asked now is “Can this product sell?” If it can, labels will push the music on the radio to get it spins and then work on an image and produce a video...the stage show is at the bottom of the list of priorities.

If the song has sold independently, then you stike while the iron is hot an put it out immeadiately. If the crowd knows the song because they hear it on the radio 30 times a day, will they care if the performance isn’t that great? As long as it’s passable that’s fine...the audience will perform the song for the group when they perform it live anyways! This is what happens on 106 & Park on a daily basis today. The generation after the old school era consisted of more seasoned live performers (such as Run DMC, LL Cool J, Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow, Whodini, Dr. Jecklyl & Mr. Hyde, Stetsasonic, Ultramagnetic MC’s, Public Enemy, EPMD, etc.) that came up in the same fashion. The end result? Between 1986-1989 hip hop broke out nationally as well as worldwide in what was universally hailed as the 1st Golden Age of hip hop.

Nowadays emcees/groups don’t have to necessarily pay dues and go through the process of performing live regularly. No more honing their craft and eventually earning the right to move up the ladder. What’s left now in the era of no DJ’s (but a home studio setup complete with a CD burner) is a rapper with a full CD complete with screenprinted covers looking to sell it and book some shows in hopes of “getting on”.

With the hot mixtape on the street or singles on the radio, the rapper can perform to an audience of ready made fans and perform the songs the listeners love...without having to work that hard to win them over in the first place. The indusrty is in reset mode every 3 to 5 years, meaning that 2 or 3 generations of new consumers have come and gone without even knowing what a “real” or “good” live hip hop shows even looks like...what they see today is what they’ve always. Hence, no complaints from them for the drop off in the quality of the live performance across the board in relation to hip hop/rap.

Technology has also contributed to the slow process of the deteriorating stage show in hip hop. Shortly after record labels successfully managed to remove the DJ from being the backbone/focal point of the hip hop crew, having a DAT (Digital Audio Tape) with your stage show cued up on it as opposed to vinyl for a DJ was becoming acceptable. More and more groups would just come onstage and rap to a tape in the mid to late 90’s. To add insult to injury, the backlash against “dancing” rap acts such as Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, Kwame, Redhead Kingpin & The F.B.I. and Kid N’ Play and the upsurge of hardcore music helped to forever change the dynamic of the stage show.

Whereas proven masters of the live stage show such as LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane, KRS One, Public Enemy and others began experiencing a decline in their careers near the mid 90’s, hardcore acts that pretty much just stood their while the crowd went crazy to the music took over. The stage show became somewhat of a lost art, although there were several acts that were popular during the mid to late 90’s that were actually excellent live performers (The Roots, The Fugees, OutKast, Onyx, DMX, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Redman, Method Man, Cypress Hill, Beastie Boys, etc.)

The money generated by the sales success of groups in the post Telecommunications Act Era (1996-) created a ripple effectin hip hop that equaled the ripple that occurred in Rock 20 years earlier when Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive” sold a disgusting amount of units on turned rock on it’s head after labels decided to go after sales rather than nurture groups/acts that made great music.This lead to groups with cultlike followings such as Dipset (notorious for having terrible live shows) who just trot out on stage, do the bear minimum, collect their show money and bounce with the audience no t even aware that they have been shortchanged.

This same thing happened in the film industry when “Jaws”became the first blockbuster and started the practice of trade magazines printing films weekly grosses the same thing happened in the film indusrty. The art suffered in deference to studios scrambling for the next hit film that could become a cash cow/franchise. Everything is everything and history repeats itself.

Nowadays, the underground hip hop scene seems to be the one place where your live show or performance prowess can move you up the ladder and gain you a bigger fanbase. It helps to first make quality product, though. Labels that have built reputations on their rosters’ tours and live shows are Def Jux, Babygrande, Hiero Imperium, Rhymesayers, Nature Sounds, Think Differently, Stones Throw and QN5 Music just to name a few. It seems that it is the only remnant of the old way left in the present hip hop world. When you see a flyer say that El-P, Mr. Lif, C Rayz Walz, Aesop Rock, Poison Pen and Pumpkinhead are doing a show somewhere, you know what you’re going to get for the most part...a rockin’ show (the sound system is another matter altogether).

One.