The best thing about West Coast underground hip-hop acts is that they aren’t trying to sell you an image. They just try to write engaging or, at the very least, amusing rhymes. Often, a self-aware sense of humor lies behind the lyrics, allowing these artists to avoid the trap of boasting and marketing one’s own ego at the expense of the music. This unique subgenre of hip-hop was on display at the 9:30 Club this past Thursday, as the second annual Cali Comm 2002 tour, featuring Lifesavas, Schoolyard featuring Planet Asia, People Under the Stairs and Del tha Funkee Homosapien, came through to showcase some of the talent that the West Coast underground has to offer.
Schoolyard fulfilled its function as an opening band admirably, beginning and ending their set in a timely fashion, neither impressing nor disconcerting an audience who had never heard of them before, and likely never will again. People Under the Stairs were more noteworthy, spinning jazzy samples and solid bass lines as the backdrop for the vocal stylings of Thes One and Double K (who looks like he could be an adult version of the kid from the Wes Craven movie of the same name). With the crowd feeling the flow after People Under the Stairs’ set, Buku 1 came out to calm everyone down with its mediocre MC skills and quirky (read: not funny) lyrics, building expectations for Del tha Funkee Homosapien as the crowd’s patience waned.
Del’s set consisted of material from his solo LPs, and from his days as member of Hieroglyphics (a hip-hop collective featuring members of such other groups as Souls of Mischief and Casual), as well as from his recent collaborations with Dan the Automator and Kid Koala. Though he is the cousin of famed gangsta rapper Ice Cube, Del’s approach to hip-hop is irreverent and whimsical, as the subjects of his verbal barrages extend from video games to manga/sci-fi like narratives rather than gangland brutality. He’s what the nerdy shut-in down the hall from you would be rapping about if he could rhyme worth a damn. Although more varied in focus, he isn’t above engaging in the occasional moment of self-lauding braggadocio as he criticizes MCs who can’t match his verbal prowess and unconventional rhyme schemes.
Del’s performance was particularly impressive for the revamping given to some of his more familiar songs, choosing an improvisational freestyle over the album version of some of his songs. His live version of Gorillaz’ “Clint Eastwood,” while lacking the mellifluous crooning of Damon Albarn, did include an new second verse chronicling how he came to be part of the collaboration. Many of his earlier songs from solo efforts were reworked slightly, augmenting the weak, video game-style beats with more solid lines and even changing the lyrics to whatever he particularly felt like rapping about at any given moment. The audience was engrossed with Del’s performance (some guys were even moshing, either missing the point or too drunk to care) before ending with “At the Helm,” a crowd-pleaser from the Hieroglyphics album Third Eye Vision.
Cali Comm 2002 ended with the opening acts returning to the stage for some old-fashioned freestyle rapping. Results ranged from the impressive to the unspectacular to the terrible. Buku 1 made several jokes about being shot by the sniper during his visit, not exactly up-to-date humor considering the suspects had been caught that morning. Sniper jokes are sooo two weeks ago. This was an excellent example of the talent and creativity existing in underground hip-hop, with one performer stepping up to the mic almost as soon as the one before had finished, as the DJ spun a host of original beats in the background. Del and company’s performance during Cali Comm 2002’s stop in D.C. demonstrated the wide range and varied nature of the talent that West Coast hip-hop has to offer. In a town where heroes are scarce, and good hip-hop shows even scarcer, that’s about as much as anyone can expect.
