September 25. Los Angeles Hip-Hop fans welcomed back El-P and Definitive Jux’s newest member, Cage, to the Knitting Factory in Hollywood.
The headliners were preceded by an audio Visual performance by DJ Mike Relm (ed. check out his chilling Hurricane Katrina video on his site) that included visual scratches (fast forwarding and rewinding video) of everything from the movie “Fight Club” to “The Peanuts.” The music was just as eclectic as the video it was set to. Tunes by Devo, Led Zeppelin, Jackson 5, Rage Against the Machine and host of others got the crowd so hyped I was worried that people were going to riot once Cage and El-P got on stage. Mike Relm was followed by the totally unimpressive Yak Ballz, who rapped in a style so similar to Cage’s I had to wonder if he wasn’t trying to borrow his image. Quickly enough Y@k stepped into the back up role and Cage hopped onto the stage and had practically the entire venue bouncing heavy and screaming the lyrics to cuts off of the Weather Proof album. “Blue collar to Corporate, bless the unfortunate, like when I put my foot down and the bitch still aborted it.” Anytime, anybody, anywhere is yelling something like that in a room, people’s heart rates have got to be up. Before the end of the night one fight had to be quickly broken up, who knows how many mosh pits had broken out and at least one drink had been thrown from the Knitting Factory’s balcony on the crowd below.
After El-P’s arrival to the stage the music turned to mostly tracks off of Cage’s new album “Hell’s Winter,” his first on the Def Jux label. Even though the CD had been out for less than a week, a vast amount of the fans new the versus word for word. A guest singing spot by Darryl Palumbo on the track “Shoot Frank” also added to the night. El-P got in the mix by performing songs off of “Fantastic Damage” and a new solo project that he just announced.
The show was about as live as they get without starting to make people nervous. By the end of the night the not so thick skinned side of me wanted to pick up a bag of granola and listen to the Grateful Dead until I fell asleep. But no. Between the contagious hype of the crowd the energy of the performers (yeah even Y@k) I took off back up to Ojai wondering when it was going to happen again.
