Conscious Daughters Offer Wake-Up Call
Conscious Daughters, Mac Mall, Young Lay, Watts Gangsters Saturday, July 20, The Met
Between a drowsy crowd and some sleepwalking rappers, it’s amazing the Conscious Daughters were able to keep anybody awake.
But the singers in the Oakland-based female duo were the only ones conscious at a half-filled, decaffeinated Met Saturday night.
They hit the stage like a pair of pH-balanced jackhammers, pounding the crowd’s ears with their strong-enough-for-a-man-but-made-by-women rap style.
The Conscious Daughters displayed a different dimension of themselves with each song they performed.
They were victims stung by AIDS during the compelling, rapid-fire “All Caught Up.”
Lyrics of Las Vegas-style luxury riding an earthquaking bass line moved the crowd on the cutthroat anthem “Gamers.” And “you go girls” was chanted when the Daughters showed their hip-hop prowess during an improvisational freestyle rap.
The rest of the performers, Mac Mall, Young Lay, and the Watts Gangsters, were as lifeless as the audience they were performing for - an audience small enough you could choose where you wanted to sit without much hassle.
Considering the average age and income of hip-hop consumers, perhaps the price of the tickets - a wallet-wounding $35 - discouraged fans from filling The Met. But that is no excuse for the haphazard efforts of Mac Mall and Young Lay.
Young Lay can be cut some slack because he became the latest victim of soundman sabotage when he walked off the stage after his music was cut short.
But the technical difficulties were like answered prayers for a crowd being lulled to sleep by Lay’s stage show. The routine was based on two background singers - one danced crazily around the stage while the other stood around as much as Young Lay, whose rhymes couldn’t be heard over his mush-mouthed crew.
Mac Mall’s too-cool-for-a-stage-show recipe grew flavorless faster than his freestyle tauntings.
When he wasn’t casually strolling the stage so relaxed he could have been talking on a street corner, he kept asking the crowd if they wanted him to freestyle.
Then, instead of making up an unrehearsed rap, he would complain about the crowd not being “into it.” Which it wasn’t.
The less-known Watts Gangsters forgot rap is a performing art with its heavily sedated stage presence, as well.
The Body Snatchers did not even perform.
It’s been said the best shows are made from that mystic pingpong of energy ricocheting between artist and audience.
With the exception of the Conscious Daughters, everyone at The Met, including the audience, must have skipped that chapter in the handbook on concert etiquette.
, DataTimes