Saturday night's nostalgia-fest at the Scottish Rite Temple was meant to draw out all the "grown 'n' sexy people," which, as it turns out, is a dwindling cohort in KC. Maybe some ran into trouble scoring a babysitter on a Saturday night in order to check out the lineup of Shock G (of Digital Underground), Naughty By Nature, Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. A promoter with some group called Dutch Entertainment, which I presume worked with Magic 107.3 to put on the show, informed me Friday that tickets were incredibly limited, but the place was never more than half full, and the venue's red, velvet curtains made it feel very much like the opening of a high school play.
That vibe turned out to be kinda perfect, though. Comedian Jus Jay, the night's host, sprinkled the evening with back-in-the-day memories of homemade Pixy Stix made from Kool-Aid and sugar, of blowing into Nintendo cartridges and rollerskating to Bone Thugs N Harmony at Skateland. When he asked the crowd at a quarter to 9:00 PM, "Are y'all havin' a good time?" the couple behind me in balcony seats groaned. "Hell naw," yelled the female half of the pair, "Ain't nothin' happened yet and we been here since 6:00!"
After an opening set of music from DJ Fresh and a performance by a local rapper whose name was never clear (Reece? East? Reef?), Shock G bounded onto the stage, skinny and energetic as a kid on Ritalin, dressed as his alter ego, Humpty.
Humpty performed "Return of the Crazy One," "Sex Packets," "Same Song," "The Humpty Dance," and his verse from "We're All in the Same Gang. Then, he ditched the jacket, Groucho glasses, fake nose and hat and introduced himself as Shock G.
With help from a smooth-jazz guitarist and DJ Fuze, the Digital Underground member reminded us that he was responsible for producing Tupac's first album with a live breakdown of some of the classics from 2Pacalypse Now. Shock G took to his keyboard to play the instrumental to"So Many Tears" and performed his verse from "I Get Around" (a song I affectionately refer to as "In Defense of Date Rape" for the verse: It's a lot of G's doin' time/ 'cause a groupie bit the truth and told a lie) and closed out with "Freaks of the Industry." (There's a song with the same name by Big Scoob, which reminds me that Shock G shouted out Tech N9ne, and said, "Who wants to see Tech N9ne tonight?....Well, he ain't here.")
After an extended (and boring) dance contest hosted by Jus Jay, Naughty By Nature's Treach, Vin Roc and DJ Kay Gee hit the stage looking like they just stepped out of an MTV video from 1991. The Jackson 5's "ABC" melded seamlessly into "O.P.P." In keeping with the old-school theme, DJ Kay Gee played a mix of songs by DMX, Next, Zhane and Snoop Dogg.
They played a couple songs from their new album before Treach poured shots from a bottle of Hennessy into the crowd's extended cups. "I'll share my Corona too," Vin Roc said, spilling from his bottle. "Drink, y'all," they instructed. Treach stripped his white wifebeater off like it was made of Kleenex and poured out a shot of Henny on his arm for Tupac. "Tupac lives!" they declared. "We just won't tell you where."
As a finale, they invited the crowd onstage to dance with them to "Hip Hop Hooray," and begged to know an address to the after-party. "We'll go to somebody's house," Treach said, an indication that it's been awhile since Naughty By Nature partied like it's 1991.
Naught By Nature in KC Sept 09 from Sikestyle on Vimeo.
After a two-step contest (zzzzz), Jus Jay introduced Rick da Rula. The security guards posted at each door were too busy snapping camera phone pictures to notice as those of us still in the balcony crept to the ground level for a closer view. Slick Rick dripped with his trademark chains -- "a quarter of a million" worth, he claimed -- and ever-present eyepatch. He performed classics like "Mona Lisa" before attempting to give a shout-out to the new school, ordering the DJ to throw on tracks by relatively youthful Jim Jones, Shawty Lo, Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy, but the crowd booed it down. "Are you all being difficult in this bitch?" Slick Rick smirked. "If you got soul, you recognize soul."
I Get Around
Ghetto Jam (by Domino)
Freaks of the Industry
Naughty By Nature:
O.P.P.
Uptown Anthem
Dirt All By My Lonely
Craziest
It's On
I Gotta Lotta
Everything's Gonna Be Alright
Get to Know Me Better
Jamboree
Feel Me Flow
Hip Hop Hooray
Slick Rick:
??? (I completely missed his first verse)
Street Talking
Mona Lisa
The Art of Storytelling Pt. 1 verse
Hey Young World
Children's Story
Doug E. Fresh
Keep Rising to the Top
Lodi Dodi (with Slick Rick)
Let Me Clear My Throat
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@jjskck
From where I was sitting in the balcony, it sounded like we were in a gymnasium, but once we moved down to the floor level, it got less echo-y. Even bothering to make people sit that far away was just ridiculous. I hope everyone else up there got brave and moved down, too.
I wonder if somehow they just didn't get the word out well enough for people to show, despite plugs on 107.3? The only hiphopkc.com regular I saw there got his hat signed by everyone who performed, which was awesome.
I forgot all about this show. I still can't figure out if it would have made me happy or sad, given the crowd size, attitude, and especially the LOOONG filler between sets. I hate that shit. These guys are legends in my eyes and it sounds like the whole thing was just thrown together. Nadia, were the production values as abysmal as I'm imagining?
Well, he performed longer, but I didn't include the whole "What's the sexiest zodiac sign?" thing he did (VERY early 90s) or the game he played with the crowd that was like, "NY is short for New -" and the crowd would go, "YORK!" and he'd go, "If you're Muslim you don't eat --" "PORK!" and so on.
What, they didn't have a domino toppling exhibition as well? No paper-airplane challenge? Man, this show was really low on the extracurricular events. You were even home before Monday!
Kinda weird, in light of all that, how the headliner performed only three songs. It's like a reverse-pyramid effect, with the openers doing longer sets.
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