On Saturday night the Sunshine Theatre packed hundreds of hip-hop fans between their walls for an amazing night of politically aware music featuring Gangstarr, Common and Talib Kweli, among others.
The show lasted roughly five hours and was crammed with amazing performances set back just a bit by some technical difficulties.
Opening the set was Gangstarr, an underground rap duo that set the tone for the rest of the evening. They got the crowd dancing and excited, engaging the audience with extended use of call and response before, during and after their songs. Among the many standard chants usually used during rap performances, other chants pertinent to our current political climate found their ways into the audience's collective mouth.
"When I say 'no,' y'all say 'war,'" said Guru, one of Gangstarr's emcees.
The anti-war sentiment was constant throughout the evening. This should come as no surprise: The '60s had hippie rock and we have hip-hop. With artists like Public Enemy and KRS-One droppin' science on politics and the problems in urban America to an infectious dance groove, the underground hip-hop scene has always been "conscious."
After Gangstarr came the crown prince of left-wing consciousness in hip-hop, Talib Kweli.
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Kweli performed songs from his latest and first major-label solo effort Quality, tracks from his critically acclaimed collaboration with DJ Hi-Tek Reflection Eternal and even dropped verses from his classic collaboration with legendary Mos Def on Black Star. Kweli stunned the audience with his eloquence and bravado. Seeing him perform was like witnessing a tornado in slow motion, a force of nature executing power within the context of delicacy. He didn't jump around as much as Gangstarr or as Common would later do, but he didn't have to.
The urgency of his words and presence of his voice was more than enough to keep the crowd screaming through his hour-long set. Because his set included equal parts of Reflection Eternal and Quality, the performance took on a retrospective form, like a greatest hits of Talib Kweli album that won't get produced for a while.
Kweli even chose to perform some of his more meditative tracks like "Africa Dream," a song whose three disparate grooves presented in cross-faded succession doesn't lend itself to the traditional dance floor.
Kweli, like Gangstarr also filled his set with messages on our political situation.
During the hour after Kweli and before Common's set, a different mood settled in. The formerly abstract lighting system projected a Coca-Cola logo with the slogan "Real" as sound engineers attempted to get the microphones working, reminding many of the changing face of hip-hop.
In Times Square, a huge billboard featuring Common's laughing face surveys Broadway as a screen loops his latest commercial for Coke. Common is rising to mainstream status. When Common started his set it became clear why, less a griot than Kweli, Common is truly a traditional master of ceremonies and an entertainer.
Performing with a full band, taking a moment to break dance, crowd surfing and telling jokes - Common provided a diverse act.
He opened his set with a couple of upbeat tracks from his latest effort Electric Circus. His set took an unexpected turn as he performed a medley of covers honoring hip-hop's fallen heroes as well as other underground artists. Including verses and choruses from artists as diverse as Biggie Smalls to Tupac to The Roots, Common ended up filling up more than half of his set with covers.
Though Common is less politically focused than Kweli, his left-leanings are clear.
"We don't support this war because we already got a war going on here in America," he said. "We don't need another."
During Common's set Kweli made a cameo for a performance of Black Star's classic "Respiration," with Common performing Mos Def's verses and Kweli performing his own.
