Nearly two weeks ago hip-hop legend El-P visited Maine for the first time. Surprisingly, the show was not sold out. The die-hard fans who did attend got a rare experience that any Definitive-Jux label junkie would have paid way more than $18 for.
Making light of the smaller than expected audience El-P said, "Let's face it -- there's not a lot of us here," at which point he and hype man, The Mighty Quin, stretched the microphone cords out, jumped off the stage and performed two songs on the floor with the audience encircling them. Fans danced alongside them, hands in the air, singing along at the top of their lungs.
As if this intimacy weren't already treat enough, El-P announced that his father, a Maine resident, was in the crowd and asked that we give a big round of applause. His dad, a proud man with white ponytail, khaki fishing vest, and beaded Native-American necklace was a great addition to the warm experience.
Related:
Birth of the DVDJ, Rhythm for days, Part-time villain, More 
- Birth of the DVDJ
Much of the hype swirling around the show was that Peanut Butter Wolf was going to "scratch" DVDs, thereby inventing a whole new style of performance. Slideshow: Stones Throw Anniversary Tour at the Paradise Rock Club, November 1, 2006
- Rhythm for days
Jay Dee didn’t make music, he made movements. If it knocked in the late ’90s, he probably had a hand in it.
- Part-time villain
As much as Ill Bill eschews clichés, the Brooklyn rap goon is either a righteous friend or a torrential enemy.
- Get-along gang
Ill Bill’s got friends in fly places
- MF Doom & Madlib | Madvillainy 2
Madvillainy 2, not the much expected follow-up to the groundbreaking Madlib + Doom 2004 collaboration but a radical remix of the original album.
- What rhymes with Barack?
The story of underground hip-hop these days often seems like the inverse of Barack Obama’s story.
- Due Dilla-gence
Extraordinarily missed Detroit beat stylist J Dilla (a/k/a Jay Dee) was righteously benevolent.
- Clik tracks
Hide your naughty daughters and aspiring MC sons: Brooklyn’s Duck Down is that kingly retrofitted, incomparably propped hip-hop label that all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to fuck with.
- Fantastic damage
Unlike hip-hop acts that deny bucking convention for the sake of eccentricity, Anti-Pop Consortium were as clear on day zero as they will certainly be at Great Scott next Thursday about their maverick intentions.
- Mr. Incongeniality
The night before this interview, Bomshot pulled what might go down as the most boneheaded stunt in Boston hip-hop history when, in the middle of a crowded Slaine and Ill Bill show at Harpers Ferry, he attempted to cheap-shot the former from behind.
- Get sprung
Between the packages that turn up on my Jamaica Plain doorstep and the envelopes that stuff my Phoenix mailbox, I have enough music to start a mixtape spot in Downtown Crossing.
- Less
Topics:
New England Music News
, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More
, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, Underground Hip-Hop, Asylum, Asylum, EL-P, EL-P, Less
