Dave is..
At K’naan and Wale at Irving Plaza.
I don’t see a lot of rap shows, mainly cause they tend to start much later than they’re supposed to and are (at least in my limited experience) poorly mixed, phoned in, and messy. Still, Wale and K’naan are hardly typical rappers, both in the college radio audience approved, Mos Def and Talib Kweli style.
I discovered Wale with his 2008 Mixtape About Nothing which is thematically based around Seinfeld (and which samples not only the theme song, but quotes from the show, Michael Richards infamous nightclub rant and even a Julia Louis-Dreyfuss voicemail.). K’naan released his album of the year candidate Troubadour last year but I didn’t discover him till I was in South Africa as his Waving the Flag song is Coke’s World Cup theme song. We got to see him play at the World Cup draw concert in December and I have been listening to his album almost obsessively since then.
The double bill tonight was the kick-off to their joint tour. Even got broadcast live on MTV.com (Videos still up: HERE) Wale’s opening set was definitely the weaker. Backed by a DJ he suffered from some of those usual complaints about rap shows, mainly the difficulty in making out the lyrics over the sampled backgrounds.
K’naan on the other hand was excellent. Backed by a live band the Somali rapper put on a hell of a set, hitting most of Troubadour as well as the best off his first album. He even brought out Nas and Damian Marley for a guest spot. Nas spitting out a bit of New York State of Mind before they backed K’naan on I Come Prepared. He even mixed in a powerful a cappella version of Somalia.
