Two Scholars Rock Fresh, North by Northwest

I walked into WOW hall during Bambu’s set. He had a smaller crowd because it was still early and he was wearing a Jason Mraz fedora, but other than that he was good. He dropped one of his songs over the beat of Hip Hop by Dead Prez that managed to get the crowd going. 

By the time Macklemore came on the crowd had gotten much bigger. He put on a really good show, that included some acapella rapping about nikes and being an original. Sounds a little cliché, but the crowd was into it. For the last song he ran off stage and came back on with a wig and a british accent, at least I’m ninety percent sure that’s what happened. He started saying that he came all the way over from Great Britain to start a dance party, and he heard that in Eugene we liked to….dance. The crowd yelled back in response, although I’m sure they would have had the same reaction to anything else. Overall the performance was good quality and creative. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ new album is available for free online because as he put it, they are “hella nice.”

The Blue Scholars finally came on, the hall was for the most part packed with a large number of guys, but a good number of girls too (both groups with the “You Go Girl!” stamps that they got on their wrists at the door). They had great stage presence. For one song they managed to bring up about thirty girls, and a few eager guys, onto the stage. Their playlist included The Ave, 50 Thousand Deep, some of their newer material like Paul Valery (which samples the song Fireflies by Owl City), and some even newer material that they are working on for a new album. Their encore consisted of North by Northwest being sung by not only the Blue Scholars, but Macklemore and Bambu as well. Along with some crowd surfing by a couple of the rappers themselves.  

I think the audience in general felt a personal connection with the Blue Scholars and Macklemore that helped make the show. They are Northwest hip hop, they live and rap about the Northwest, and we ARE the Northwest. It also helps that they are singing about something more than a girl with a nice ass, not that I’m saying that doesn’t make a good song too. Finally there is simply something about a hip hop concert in general where each person is moving in unison to the beat allowing the crowd to almost pulse as one unit to the music. Thirteen bucks was more than worth the experience.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 10:43 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.