Fat Beats bestond wereldwijd 10 jaar dus dat moest gevierd worden. Immortal Technique en J-Zone zouden naar de Melkweg komen om het verjaardagsfeestje extra op te leuken. (Tekst: Engels)
The evening looked promising. A 10 Year Anniversary Fat Beats Party with two MC’s that are the complete opposites of each other, considering their live performance. One likes to talk about his shitty car, and the other about the shitty government. One talks about wearing fake jewelry while the other talks about smuggling cocaine. The mix was bound to be good.
Arriving halfway through the opening act, the crowd still wasn’t very alive. The famous Dutch rapper Raymzter was on stage performing some of his new tracks. I must admit that his beats have gotten better and his coming album looks promising. Coming towards the end of his set, he did manage to wake the crowd up, which is not easy, but Raymzter managed himself well.
The crowd consisted of a lot of young people including some nice looking women. This kind of surprised me because most Immortal Technique listeners are revolutionaries that don’t care about looking stylish too much. Or so I thought…
After Raymzter, it was time for the headliners to start and this made a lot of people happy. J-Zone had an excellent entrance to the stage. Wearing his pimp fur jacket, the man from Queens ran up to the stage with the classic Bobby Brown track “Its My Prerogative” playing in the background. The MC then continued by changing the words to the original song to make his own pimped out version. Very funny and dope, especially the part where he threw a condom to the crowd. He then went on to explain that he just arrived from an 8 hour plane flight and was ready to party hard.
Starting his set off with “Eatadiccup”, J-Zone killed his hardcore fans with great tracks such as “Bum Bitch Ballad” and “5 Star Hooptie”. With a little bit of “tellsell” in him (refer to my Non Phixion review), J-Zone made very clear that his new album was dropping soon and the newest single “Basketball” was performed with a lot of passion. This man combines comedy and rap in a very good way and it was the first time where I saw a crowd actually laugh and clap at the same time for a single MC (in a positive way). J also did a bit of stand up when he praised everyone that wears fake jewelry and said that he was almost robbed once when he was younger. Continuing his set with a lot of vodka, Zone gave a very entertaining performance that made me hope for an encore. J-Zone will be performing in Haarlem soon and make sure you check him out because I consider this more of a foreplay set than the real thing because his real set is undoubtedly longer and fuller. Wait, that doesn’t sound right…
While waiting for Immortal Technique to hit the stage, the DJ started spinning his vinyl. As if going off-beat wasn’t bad enough with his turntablism trickery, doing played out tracks like “Shook Ones” was a bit unnecessary. Especially because “Burn” was played afterwards. Hey bro, don’t you know the unwritten laws of DJing? Never play two songs of the same artist right after each other!
Finally it was time for the main act. The man everyone had been waiting for hit the stage and he brought a lot of energy. Starting the set with a lot of aggression, Immortal Technique worked his vocal cords to the fullest. This even surprised me because if he kept on going like this, he would for sure lose his voice in 10-15 minutes.
Doing classic tracks from his album “Revolutionary vol.2”, Immortal did not have a very different set then the one in Breda or Leiden. Classics such as “Harlem Streets” were performed with the usual crowd participation in the hook: “Homicide Harlem, BLAOW! Whats the problem?” If you had seen one of the previous two shows of IT in Holland (which were organized by HIJS), then there isn’t much for me to tell because the set was the same. I do have a couple of remarks to make, which will follow..
After around four tracks, something very disappointing started. Out of nowhere, IT asked the crowd if they wanted free shit. Then he went on to say that free shit must be deserved and people should yell for it. When the crowd started acting like monkeys, the worker from fatbeats hit the stage to throw around copies of Immortal Technique cd’s, stickers, and vinyls (!). I didn’t like this because it took up around 10 minutes of the set, and my friend almost got hit in the head with one of those cd’s. Also watching people argue over grabbing stuff was not nice either.
An unfortunate part of the set was that (Just like in Breda) people in the back would not shut their mouths. This can be very annoying when IT starts to talk about some serious shit about culture differences or the government. IT also did his routine stage dive that almost ended fatally. The heavy man took a bit of power to keep up and he almost landed on his head. “Homicide Melkweg SPLOSSHHH, where’s Immortal’s head?!”
Although it is always nice to watch an amazing MC like Immortal Technique perform, I do want to complain about a couple of things. First of all, IT did not finish off every track. This was not done on purpose either, sometimes just because of the loss of air or his bad condition. Secondly, the whole “give me free shit” thing was unnecessary. Not only because Fat Beats could eventually sell that merch, but because of the fact that it made a “revolutionary” audience look greedy. Thirdly, I thought that “You Never Know” was a bit too heavy for this set. It dragged both IT and the crowd into a bit of boredom. Finally, I want to make a comment about the t-shirts being sold at the end of the show. To sell these low quality shirts for a price of 15 euros each is just insane (I heard it was 25 at fatbeats). Our revolutionary MC shouldn’t try to revolutionize the t-shirt prices for big profits.
Overall, it was a fun evening. The crowd basically got the best of both worlds when they saw comedy performed by J-Zone and conscious rap by Immortal Technique. I did expect a slightly better show from IT, but his energy and rage made up for it. I would definitely recommend J-Zone in Haarlem, and as he stated in the interview: “Don’t forget to floss your teeth children!”
Fixtures:
Hoogetepunt: J-Zone
Dieptepunt: “Gratis Shit” Rage
Bier: 2 euro
Toilet: gratis
Garderobe: 1 Euro
Foto’s: some f*cked up pics
Geluid: good
Publiek: first floor full
Damage: 12.50 Euro + lidmaatschap
Cijfer: 7.5
Fixtures:
Hoogetepunt: J-Zone
Dieptepunt: “Gratis Shit” Rage
Bier: 2 euro
Toilet: gratis
Garderobe: 1 Euro
Foto’s: some f*cked up pics
Geluid: good
Publiek: first floor full
Damage: 12.50 Euro + lidmaatschap
Cijfer: 7.5