Magnificent City: Aceyalone and RJD2 Take SF

Bam. Pow. Sock. In an age when garbage merchants can build nine-figure corporate entertainment empires, otherworldly music experiences are happily still rattling balls in America's independent clubs.

And so it was that the appropriately-named Independent in SF hosted hip-hop's current wonder twins, SoCal veteran emcee Aceyalone and Columbus-bred deejay and producer RJD2, supporting their fresh full-length collaboration, Magnificent City. The LP is neither's best work, but when such mammoth talents pass through the neighborhood, you can't stay home for the Bulgarian ice dancing preliminaries.

(I'm experimenting today, so if you click on a pic for detail, you'll see it bigger on Flickr, not a pop-up window.)

For openers, rap duo The Others, backed by Gallic deejay Wax Tailer, spun through some generally unremarkable tracks (punctuated briefly with an ingenious loop of the Doors' "Break on Through," which sounded so dope that all other producers who haven't attempted this sample oughta go back to DJ school).

The sell-out crowd was then treated harshly by LA avant-garde rapper Busdriver, who was wearing some kind of festive lights around his neck that made for trippy pics in the dark of the club.

Busdriver wields a mic like an unstable postal worker might wield a Gatlin gun, firing off blasts of stacatto missiles in every direction. And his stage presence could best be described as "ornery," as he treated the predominately white SF audience (which seemed a little more hippie-heavy than the crowd for MF Doom a couple months earlier) with simutaneous gratitude and unadulterated contempt. Which is sort of how I felt about them. It was great.

Then out snuck RJD2, a Lillaputian who looks more like the guy who fixes your hard drive than one of America's most innovative studio producers. He opened solemnly with a, "I don't usually play other people's music, but..." and then he spun a few bars from Slum Village's "Fall in Love" in honor of their fallen producer Jay Dee, who was spirited away earlier in the week. The track sounded particularly warm on the Independent's phenomenal sound system.

RJD2 then assembled an exquisite hour of diverse tracks from their source materials, including live samples from his excellent CDs Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke. He also enraptured the audience with beats and bleeps pounded out on a fingerpad (pictured above), usually set to visuals from a BBC documentary about deep sea fish. The crabs, hammerheads, and fish tornadoes worked about 942% better than you'd expect.

The surprise of the night was the end of RJ's solo set, when he whipped out an acoustic guitar for a cool-down rendition of his "Making Days Longer." It was sweet but also disquieting for his career. Please don't go Moby on us, RJ. Please.

When the song ended, the fish movie's credits rolled. And then out came Aceyalone.

Acey is a rapper of alien skills, with cheetah-like delivery and cheeky lyrics, and even live you can understand almost every word he spits. While he doesn't pump up the crowd, chat up the ladies, or juggle cats on fire, the guy will friggin' rhyme and rhyme until the cops kick him out.

And with RJ laying down unstoppable beats, many of the young people in the crowd -- especially the heavy-lidded dudes who had been sucking on doobies back when Busdriver was spittin' three hours earlier -- were literally passing out from exhaustion. Sadly, they missed Aceyalone urging them, "Walk straight kid/Master your high." Maybe next time, kids.

Comments

[Chuck Muncie]

"I'm warning you, I love to rhyme."

Acey is hungry like a 5th round draft pick from a small school who KNOWS he's better than the first rounders from the glamour conferences...

[catherine]

Clearly, I need to spend more time hanging out with you. Damn, you have all the fun.