This was an interesting deal. You get to see the Wu-Tang Clan's GZA for free, but you have to arrive early to make sure you get into the show. So, Keith and I get show up at the Cradle at 8:00, an hour and a half before the doors are set to open. We're pretty close to being the first ones who finally get in- early enough to claim our own Scion bags, which are pretty nice for free swag, and come stuffed with a magazine devoted to the sponsoring vehicle, the most horrible t-shirt you ever saw, and a cd sampler that even has a few hip-hop acts I've actually heard of. But that's secondary- we're there to see the Genius of one of the more influential hip hop acts of the last fifteen years.
The first couple of hours feature no live music, just an Atlanta based DJ (disturbingly wearing a LA Dodgers cap) playing the same basic list of classic hip hop cuts that you hear at pretty much every show between sets. Which was fine. I was part of the group crowded around the television near the bar, watching the Cavs/Pistons game.
The first act was a live band called either "The Fyre Department" (the name that appeared in the promotional material) or "The Fire Department", (the name that appears on their myspace page, but the "y" spelling also is on the page). Wikipeida's entry for the Fyre Department is a spin-off of some sort from D12. So, I don't know. The myspace page informs me that they played on the Talib Kwali/MF Doom cut "Fly That Knot" (actually, Talib mentions them in the begining of the track, so it turns out that I had unwittingly heard of them). For what is apparently a studio group, they are a pretty good live act. Unsurprisingly for a studio band, they don't have a front man. They played some hip hop/rock jams, at one point breaking into a pretty good instrumental version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Their presence made more sense when it turned out the they were the GZA's backing group.
The GZA as a solo act is an interesting proposition. Clearly, most of the crowd at most of his shows is primarily interested and familiar with the work he did with the Wu-Tang Clan, but only one Wu-Tang track features him by himself (that I'm aware of anyway). So, he couldn't really stick to his solo material and still please the crowd, which forced him to take on other rappers' parts in songs. Which he was more than up to.
He opened with "Reunited", off of the Wu-Tang forever disc, probably to get the crowd to scream "It's Wu, Motherfucka. Wu-Tang Motherfucka". The next track was "Bring Da Ruckus" off of the Enter the 36 Chambers disc. He came out with his bottle of Champagne (Or, as he described it for the literary motherfuckers, "Sham-Pag-Nee") and with Dready Kruger (who I had heard on the Wu-Tange Meets Indie Culture album) as his hype man. I was pleased when, bantering with the crowd, he echoed a conversation Keith and I had on the way to the show, saying "This is the most undergroudn shit you gonna hear. This is Wu-Tang".
Mixed in with some presumably solo stuff I was unfamiliar with, he rocked some classics tracks like "Liquid Swords", "Triumph" (which just might be my favorite Wu-Tang track), "C.R.E.A.M." and then, as "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" (an ODB track) he brought out his special guest and made the show unforgettable. "Y'all don't even know" he said, as he introduced the legend himself, Big Daddy Kane". Kane, who lives in Durham, came out, and if you don't understand how cool that is, you never will.
The show ended on a markedly strange note, with a series of wagers that the GZA offered the crowd, betting that no one could produce a copy of the "Grandmasters" album he did with Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, and then offering cash to anyone who could produce a picture of the ODB (someone did, but I didn't see GZA make good on his offer). He announced a new Wu-Tang album, 8 Diagrams and began shaking hands with the front row. I managed to make it to the front and offered up my pen and my trusty notebook for the Genius to sign. He did, and wonder of wonders, I got my pen back (despite the asshoel who tried to grab it from GZA's hand).
Was it the best show I saw this past moth? Probably not. GZA didn't connect with the crowd like Brother Ali did, and he's simply in a different league than KRS-One, but the moments he was sharing the stage with the Big Daddy was undeniably special, and he worked harder than probably was strictly neccessary for a crowd that didn't pay a dime to get in.
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