After my last hip hop concert experience, I was doubly excited that rising rapper Jonwayne was coming to the Music Hall of Williamsburg as an opener for Mount Kimbie, rather than as part of a rap show. That meant I could catch him live without standing around listening to open mic night before he came on. Even so, my friend and I arrived on the early side and after observing the completely empty music room, repaired to the basement bar for a drink. I admit that we were too busy tasting speed-rack rotgut (Kentucky Gentleman - better than expected!) and missed most of the opening set by D33J (pronounced "deej"). His laptop'n'guitar jams sounded pretty good, though, and he did his job, which was to priime the crowd for Jonwayne.
I had just got through telling someone that, no, they hadn't missed Jonwayne and that he would probably go on at 9:00 sharp, given how tightly Bowery Presents runs their shows, when the lights went down and a hulking figure shambled on stage and began unleashing sharp, dazzling, and dramatic beats from the stage. Even in the dark and with no introduction, everyone's attention was quickly focused on him. This was Jonwayne, and the timing and style of the beginning of the show were just the start of the brilliant surprises he had in store.
After about 10 minutes of music, the spotlights brightened and Jon picked up the mic and launched into Ode To Mortality from Cassette 3: Marion Morrison Mixtape. By the third verse, when he's procuring "drops of dark matter" and describing the "pure oceanic space inside my eyelids," it felt like he had much of the crowd in the palm of his hand. He continued with three more short songs from Cassette 3: Numbers On The Hoard, his appropriation of the similarly named Pusha T jam, Blaq Cowboy ("I am the rap game Sam Beckett"), and The Ritz, managing the neck-snapping changes of mood, tone and tempo with ease. All the while, he acted as his own DJ, dropping beats in and out with a practiced push of a button or twist of a knob while never losing his connection to the audience. This was virtuoso one-man-band stuff, and when you add the effective theatre of Jonwayne's gestures and use of the stage (at one point he sat on the stairs on the right of the stage and rapped from there), you have one of the most dynamic live acts in contemporary hip hop.
Like most great rappers, Jonwayne has a certain arrogance and is not uncomfortable projecting an air of superiority. Most of the time, you get the idea that this is protective, a force field against self doubt and self consciousness. Even so, near the end of his set, when he started repeating "It's not the crown that makes the royalty, it's the crowd and their loyalty," and expected us to say it along with him, I wondered if he had overreached. "I'm a performance artist," he told the audience, "I can do this for five minutes," if we didn't comply, that is. He also picked out individuals in the crowd who weren't feeling it and as much as told them to get with the program. You know what? They did, and he soon had a pretty good group chant going. And when he walked off stage shortly after, the audience wanted him back and he returned for another song or two.
Besides the songs from the mixtapes, he also did a few of the more beat-driven songs from his reflective debut album, Rap Album 1, set for release on October 29th. These were well-received and when, in Marion Morrison he rapped "I'm on the fringe, Mackelmore ain't got shit on me," I'd like to think the cheers were for the sentiment rather than just the name check of that pandering top 40 rapper. Overall, Jonwayne's act was a thrilling display and one I would gladly repeat. I don't know how many people plumped for the cassettes at the merch table, but I suspect a brisk business there when Rap Album 1 is available.
By the time the stage was set and the lights went down for Mount Kimbie, the Music Hall was at max cap and I was jammed up against the wall by people ready to dance. And as soon as Kai Campos and Dominic Maker took the stage, dance they did. There was a certain aggressive jockish quality to some of the dancers - at least in our little corner of the crowd - and my friend was prompted to ask "Have bros taken over the world?" while I wondered if EDM has ruined IDM.
I have read in more than one interview that they attribute some of the wonderful oddness of Crooks & Lovers to their not knowing what they were doing. The somewhat disappointing poppy direction of sophomore album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth makes me think they were not being entirely disingenuous. I wouldn't mind a return to amateurism, especially if it meant no more collaborations with the self-indulgent King Krule, whose stentorian vocals on two songs nearly sink the new album entirely. In any case, he was not on tour with them, thankfully. Instead, they brought Tony Kus on drums and occasional bass, and when he was bashing away and either Campos or Maker was playing guitar, Mount Kimbie seemed more than ever like a real band, and an excellent one at that.
Despite my doubts about Cold Spring Fault Less Youth and my hesitation about the motives of many of the attendees, there was no denying that they put on a fantastic concert. The projections of young Asians getting drunk and stupid on the screen behind them made me wonder if Mount Kimbie also have questions about their audience, but there was no reticence to their performance. Even the new songs sounded more interesting on the Music Hall's well-defined sound system, with the propulsive So Many Times, So Many Ways a levitating high point. As would be expected, the set was sequenced like a great DJ's playlist, with peaks and valleys and straightforward trajectories mixed with sharp left turns. One such turn was when Jonwayne joined them for a new collaboration, to the audience's overwhelming approval. Let's hope they lay that track down before the end of the tour.
In the end, it was a masterful and fully absorbing concert that allowed me to ignore my often rude fellow concertgoers. Lest I sound like a prig, it's not that I didn't move to the deep grooves, it's just that I believe a collective experience can - and should - come with kindness and joy rather than selfishness. Mount Kimbie's music left me blissfully exhausted, but also with one central question: where do they go from here?
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