Word of Mouth Tour
Stubb’s, October 25
These are strange times when a tour showcasing the finest L.A. underground hip-hop talent (read: Gang Starr, not gangsta) concludes with a massive sing-along to the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way.” It’s certainly odd on paper, but in reality, it was no weirder than Jurassic 5 buzzing out the Rocky theme on kazoos before the DJ dropped in Bill Conti’s blitzkrieg horns at just the right instant. Hip-hop today is such that the source material — classical or bubblegum, P-Funk or acid jazz — doesn’t matter nearly as much as what DJs and MCs do with it. Early on came a virtual clinic on scratching as interpreted by three-man tag team the Beat Junkies, who toyed with the beat like prime jazzmen. At times, they hung it up ’til the tension-fraught air seemed ready to explode, while at others they steamrolled straight through it until one of numerous scratching breaks brought everything to a hypnotizing standstill. The beat was almost three-dimensional; the Junkies (and then J5 spinners Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist) were over, under, sideways, around it, but never off. Cut Chemist’s solo turn was the most instructive, as he built a stodgy, school-filmstrip lesson on African rhythms into a multilayered, full-on rump-shaking assault. Tour host Supanatural was out next, backing up his claim to world-class freestyler status with shrewd references to Stubb’s and the Longhorns, a colorful duet with the light man, and a final number that found him impersonating Method Man, Busta Rhymes, Notorious B.I.G., and Xzibit like a hip-hop Rich Little. Co-headliners Dilated Peoples made full use of the two-MCs-and-one-DJ construct, Evidence and Iriscience stalking the stage in tandem while rattling off the rope-a-dope rhymes of their fine new album The Platform, while Babu gave them a backbone solid as granite on the 1200s. If the Peoples’ quick-tongued lyrics were a little hard to keep up with at times, their overall flow was precise, compressed, and often jubilant. Doubling the Peoples’ onstage manpower (and energy level), Jurassic 5 had less room to maneuver but didn’t need it. Standing in a line like the Temptations, Chali 2na, Mark 7, Akil, and Saafer took turns rocking the microphone like code-spewing funky robots, the crowd eagerly waving the five-fingered salute. Their album Quality Control is an uncontested high point in hip-hop’s recent renaissance of straight-up skills, and if their live shows continue to be as exciting and uplifting, they can sing all the Backstreet Boys they want.This article appears in November 3 • 2000.