I Just Read About That…

[DID NOT ATTEND: April 17, 2024] Mike / 454 / Niontay / El Cousteau 

This one is embarrassing for me because I bought a ticket for this show thinking that Mike was somebody else.

I’ve wanted to try to see a few more rappers live–I really enjoyed Open Mike Eagle there’s a few alt-rappers who I like.  One of them is DAVE, from England.  Dave sold out TLA pretty quickly when he came two years ago.  So when it was announced that MIKE was playing, I bought a ticket thinking that a) the show would sell out and b) that MIKE was DAVE.

I had never heard of Mike and didn’t know there was another rapper with an insanely common first name as his rap name.  Obviously I should have confirmed that I wanted to see Dave not Mike, but I was caught up in the excitement.

Mike’s sound is pretty good although he’s a but of a mumbler.  I still figured that I’d go until Girl in Red announced a show for the same night and there was no way I was missing Girl in Red with my daughter.

I was also initially under the impression that Mike was going  to do a show by himself.  Then it was announced that there would be THREE opening acts.  Well that just sounded exhausting.

I had never heard of 454. NME says

Born Willie Wilson, his music lands somewhere between the Y2K-era style raps of Lupe Fiasco and the glitchy, post-trap tidal wave that’s been dominated by Lil Uzi Vert in recent years. Equipped with beats sweet enough to induce a sugar rush and a retro PlayStation 2-like aesthetic, Wilson stands tall in a lane of his own: take his December 2020 single ‘4 LIFE’, which features low, rumbling drum patterns and J Dilla-inspired neo-soul quirks. On the other hand, though, there’s Wilson’s recent single ‘SKITTLES’, which pulls from scattershot drum’n’bass tempos and pitched-up hyper-pop stylings, demonstrating how, when it comes to Wilson’s music as 454, there really are no boundaries.

His voice seems to be sped up to varying degrees in every song.  What an odd decision.

Niontay is also unknown to me.  Pitchfork says

Niontay was born in Milwaukee, moved to Central Florida as a kid, and now lives in Brooklyn. The 24-year-old’s music pulls from the South, Midwest, and East Coast equally without sounding forced. The track he performed at the Mavi show, “Thank Allah,” from his recent mixtape Dontay’s Inferno, is one of my favorite rap songs of the year—a relentless marathon of cold punchlines and flexes. His flow is all over the map, too: He can lay a stone-faced delivery over a hearty chipmunk-soul loop fit to soundtrack a downtown New York streetwear shop, or raise his pitch to Florida-fast-music levels, or unlock a Babyface Ray-style groove. Everything hits.

He mostly seems to be a mumbler to me.

El Cousteau is the newest of these new to me rappers.  This review from the Washington Post sounded interesting, but I just don;t ehar it in the songs I listened to

First off, how’d he learn to rap like this? “Honestly, my mother can scream,” Cousteau says. “Growing up in Trinidad [in Northeast Washington], we had a three-story house. My mom slept in the basement. I slept all the way upstairs. So for her to communicate anything was always loud. … Like, ‘IT’S BREAKFAST!’ Or like, ‘HAVE YOU SEEN MY CHARGER?’”