Nialler has a fairly accurate post about Aesop Rock’s gig in Crawdaddy on Saturday night, though I was about halfway back from the stage where the sound is not as good as upstairs but beter than the back of the venue. I thought that the gig suffered musically – this is something to do with a pet hate I have with hip-hop gigs. Actually, I have a few. One is when MC’s depend too much on call and response action with the crowd – Aesop & Rob Sonic just about stayed the right line of this but it was a close call. Their encouragement of the crowd’s ‘Olé, Olé,Olé’ didn’t help though. But the other pet hate of mine is Hip-Hop artists’ insistence of changing the backing beats of tracks – fine if it improves the track, but for the most part this isn’t the case. For an artist whose lyrics are the key, I felt that Aesop suffered as often his lyrics weren’t intelligible on Saturday night. But the gig still was victorious and hopefully he will keep his promise to return with El-P and the rest of the Def Jux Crew later in the year.
