Damn, it's been a while... Show #114 and Nas Show Run-down

What's up folks. I apologize for the two-week hiatus, but as a school teacher, I had to take full advantage of April Vacation - the week off that schools provide to allow teachers to quell their many urges to strangle high school students. The first order of business is to announce that in two weeks or so, WE WILL BE RETURNING TO A TWO-HOUR TIME SLOT. Most likely Tuesday, 10pm-12am. Stay tuned.

After that, we've got this week's show - #114. I know we didn't get last week's up, but let's not dwell in the past. Here's the playlist.

Finally, if you have listened to the last two shows, you may have heard us talk about the Nas concert we attended on Sunday, the 15th, in Providence, RI. While I'm not going to get into the pre or post-concert festivities, I thought I'd do a quick run-down of the show itself. It was at Lupo's, probably the best place to see big-name acts in New England. So far in my life, I've seen Atmosphere, Ghostface, Redman, Raekwon, Lupe Fiasco, Mr. Lif, El-P, and now Nas there. The place is pretty big, but they really packed them in for the Nas show, to the point where they were out of Bud Light bottles by the time we showed up a little after 9pm. I guess Nas is big enough that he doesn't need anyone opening for him, other than some DJ's blasting a nice mix of mid-90's hip-hop to get everyone's heads nodding.

When Nas finally came on, he jumped right into some Hip-Hop is Dead material. The crowd was pretty live, and although Nas didn't have a lazer show or anything, there was a huge HHID banner at the back of the stage with some sort of coffin prop in front of it, and the lighting followed the motif. As a huge fan of Nas' early material, and an admirer of his new album, I was pretty happy with the way he setup his show. After ripping through five tracks off HHID, including "Money Over Bullshit," "Hip-Hop is Dead," and "Black Republicans," the Little Homey took it all the way back to the beginning with some joints off Illmatic. He ran through another five joints before jumping into his next best album, It Was Written.

The rest of the show included some jumping back and forth from newer to older material, along with some lesser known tracks, including a Crispy Favorite, "Silent Murder." In all, he performed about three-quarters of Illmatic, but unfortunately, failed to play my favorite track, "Halftime." I can't complain, however, as he played just about every other one of his bangers. No matter which Nas people came to see, they got a taste of every major period of his career. The only thing I found odd was his decision to end his set with his verse of Kanye's "We Major." Below, I've posted what I can remember of his setlist. The question marks represent times where I either forgot to write something down, couldn't read what I wrote the next day (it was dark, I was drunk, and I was using my beer bottle to write on), or - in rare occurrances - didn't know the song. Towards the end of the show I ran out of paper and energy, so I definitely missed a few more, but it's a pretty good representation of what went down.

As for after the show, I can't really go into it, but I would like to give some official LCWT shout outs to: The Sportsman's Inn, Richard Cummings (no homo), Gemini, Club Balloons, Wednesday, and Dreamweaver.

Nas partial setlist, 4/15/07 - Providence, RI:

1. Money Over Bullshit
2. Hip-Hop is Dead
3. Carry On Tradition
4. QB True G
5. Black Republican
6. NY State of Mind
7. Represent
8. It Ain’t Hard to Tell
9. The World is Yours
10. Life’s a Bitch
11. Affirmative Action
12. The Message
13. Street Dreams
14. If I Ruled the World
15. ?
16. Oochie Wally
17. Get Down
18. ?
19. No Idea’s Original
20. I Want to Talk to You
21. Silent Murder
22. Nas is Like
23. Hate Me Now
24. One Mic
25. One Love
26. Made You Look
27. We Major (his verse from Kanye West song)

Brother Ali - Undisputed Truth

It is no secret that we here at Long Crisp White Tee's sweat everything that a certain Minnesota-based albino named Brother Ali drops, and his new album Unidisputed Truth is no exception. Ali brings it hard on his sophmore release, and this album is a must cop. If Rakim says it, its gotta be truth....

Support one of the best independent artists out there and buy his shit. Also check him out on May 2nd at the Middle East Upstairs. Brother Ali fuckin' destroys the room every time he performs, believe that.

The Final Four - Show #112

We made it. On Tuesday night, your boys at Long Crisp White Tee's finally rapped up our hip-hop March (and April) Madness tournament with the Final Four. As you know, the final four artists were Gangstarr, B.I.G., Ghostface, and local favorite, Mr. Lif. We played a track from each and then crowned the winner - download the show to find out who it was. If you think we screwed it up and you still want to vote, click here.

We filled the rest of the show with tracks from our honorable mentions - artists that were left off the initial bracket, either by oversight or because they just missed the cut. click here for the playlist.

Click here to download the show (.mp3 format)

Next week were back to the regular format - straight dope hip-hop as always.

Jedi Mind Tricks Show 3/29/07

Here's some recently Youtubed footage from the show we attended at the Middle East a couple weeks back. Courtesy of Product of Society Street Entertainment.

And Then There Were Four .... (Show #111)

What's up folks. The Super 16 and the Elite 8 in our Hip-Hop March Madness Bracket went down Tuesday, April 3rd (which doubled as the DDB's birthday) in the WMFO studios. We were back in our old 1-hour time slot and really had to rush to bang out 24 tracks from our favorite artists, including: Nas, Gangstarr, Method Man, Ghostface, Mr. Lif, Tribe, Akrobatik, Biggie, and more. For the full playlist click here.

You can download the show here (.mp3 format)

note: The link is currently not working. It will be up soon

We also need your help to get from the Final Four (Furious Four? Fresh Four? Funky Four? - why do all "F" adjectives sound so damn corny?) down to the last MC standing.

Once you've listened to the show, Vote on the Final Four HERE .

We'll tally up the votes, put our own 6 cents in and bring you the Final Four to start off the show next week, followed by some tracks from honorable mentions and those we just straight up forgot. Oh yeah, and I'll get that updated bracket up eventually. And if you see the DDB wandering the streets of the bean this weekend, hit him up with a happy birthday.
peace.

Reef, Sean P, and JMT Show - 3/29

This past Thursday the staff of LCWT's had the chance to catch Reef the Lost Cauze, Sean Price, and Jedi Mind Tricks all throw it down at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA. Reef opened up to a crowd that was receptive, but obviously not too familiar with his work outside of his Army of the Pharaohs appearances. He acquitted himself nicely, performing "Give it Up" and "Sound of Philadelphia," among other tracks. Although the show wasn't as intimate and energetic as his show about a month back at the Great Scott and I would have liked to see "Humble Beginnings," overall he put on a good set, especially to a crowd that came to see either Sean P or Jedi Mind.

Reef got off the stage at around 10:45, with Sean Price scheduled for 11:00. However, at 11:30, a stage hand came on to tell us that Ruck was not yet in the building. He came on stage about 15 minutes later, but not before some of his weed carriers came on stage to make sure the levels were right and remind us about 55 times that Sean Price was - in fact - a member of the Boot Camp Clik. When he got on stage it was unclear whether he had actually been late to the show or had just been back stage sobering up enough to remember his rhymes. He put on a fairly short, but energetic set that left the crowd satisfied, although no one in the house was getting ready to call their friends to brag about it. When Price's set ended, only a handful of those in attendance left (it was well past midnight at this point) before the Jedi Mind Tricks set. While there were some BCC loyalists there to catch Price pimp his new album (which is solid, but struggling to keep pace with the pre-release hype at this point), most of the crowd was there to see Jedi Mind Tricks and came ready to brawl.

When the pint-sized pugilist Vinnie Paz took the stage, the place went nuts as he dove right into some of his classic joints, ripping verses in succession to ensure there was never a lull in the excitement. This was the first time in a while that the LCWT staff watched a show at the Middle East on the ground floor below the stage, and I was dismayed that I had to divert my eyes from the stage numerous times and stay vigilant lest any stragglers from the moshpit in front of us come barreling into me and Kimo Von Oelhoffen my knee. Luckily, the Middle East security staff came through and cordoned off the pit. Those guys are pretty much always on point - as long as you're not acting a fool or trying to puff weed in the club, you're always happy that they're present, especially with a crowd like the one that shows up to see Jedi Mind Tricks. Getting back to the show, the highlight was undoubtedly when former JMT member Jus Allah (the group had so much more going for it when he was on every track) took the stage to put old beefs aside and burn a couple verses from the vault of Jedi Mind classics (if I hadn't had so many PBR tallboys I'd tell you which ones, but it's all kind of running together at this point). The only downside was that Vinnie allowed his hype-man, Crypt the Warchild of Outerspace, to take over the stage for a couple tracks. Still, I've been to several JMT shows, and I'd have to say that due to the re-emergence of Jus Allah, this was one of the best.

After the show, as the place was clearing out and people were making their final merchandise purchases, an inebriated DDB managed to get drops for the station (91.5 WMFO, ya heard?) from Crypt the Warchild, Reef the Lost Cauze, Sean Price, and Vinnie Paz, himself. We'd throw up some pictures, but of course we all forgot our cameras. Here are the drops.

Crypt the Warchild WMFO drop

Reef the Lost Cauze WMFO drop

Sean Price WMFO drop

Vinnie Paz WMFO drop