NOTE: Badass Live Show Pics (of these dudes and many, many others) Coming Soon...
My
whole plan down here was – and still is, for the most part – to
discover new hip-hop. Particularly hip-hop that doesn't suck, and
that will get me away from relying on Spotify and its endless rap
oldies to get me stiff. However – this is SXSW after all, and there
are a few spectacles that I needed to glimpse and get out of the way
before all of that craziness commenced.
The
first attraction is Dubb Sicks, who just today was voted the fifth
best MC by the Austin Chronicle. If you've ever smelled my coverage
of this carnival before, then you know this man. He's a degenerate
extraordinaire, capable of leaping giant lines of cocaine with a
single straw. And dude is also one of my favorite rappers; if you
think some bullshit gold chain noise from the “dirty” represents
the true aesthetic down here, you're wrong. That's Dubb's department.
Depraved
as ever, Dubb mounted the stage at Bat Bar on Sixth Street for a
pre-music festival blast off. He threw fake money in the crowd. He
brought women up on stage and romanced their faces. He farted. But
most of all, he rapped his Odessa dick off. There are few MCs
anywhere who can rock a show like Dubb, and even those who do fail to
leave behind a comparable stain on center stage.
My
other must-see every year – for the last few, at least – is
Homeboy Sandman. He's someone who I write about endlessly, and that's
for a good reason – there's no better rapper out right now. Dude's
a tongue-twister and a thinker, not to mention a one man army with
the live shit. Jaws drop when he spreads his wings. I'm pretty sure
that a few women in the audience were impregnated by his speech alone
last night. There's no morning after pill for that.
Boy
Sand is on Stones Throw now, which is kind of more than a big deal.
Last night they put him right near the top of the bill – second
only to the legendary Strong Arm Steady crew, who also ripped – and
man oh man did he justify the placement. With Peanut Butter Wolf
holding two mics to Boy Sand's melon, the Queens prodigy
extraordinaire entered with a hallmark a cappella, then went in for
the thrill.
Of
course this isn't like a few years ago, when Boy Sand was wowing the
fuck out of unsuspecting rap fans. Heads last night by and large knew
what they were in for, which turned out, for the most part, to be a
badass spread of straight winners from his excellent 2010 disc, The
Good Sun, and Homeboy's recent debut Stones Throw EP, Subject
Matter.
Maybe
I shouldn't have gone about things this way. Perhaps I should have
kept the bar low, so that I might be impressed with some young cat's
song about railing soccer moms on a neon WaveRunner. But it's too
late for that now. New acts seeking SXSW press from my old ass
beware: I like everything from southern rappers straight out of the
trailer park, to enlightened New York cats with fast rhymes and a
progressive sense of justice. Anything outside of those tight
parameters just won't do.
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