HipHop, Madison, Feb 1

[suspendedzen]

It’s a motherfucking tour…TOO-ER…not a tore, not a towah…tour. This is the Midwest. Goddam.

The Feb First hiphop show at the Annex in Madison was to be co-headlined by P.O.S. of the Cities and Mac Lethal from Barbecue Land with support from some of the Doomtree crew and a few locals. All of that worked out right but, in a XmasMorning-esque surprise, SIMS showed up to replace an absent Cecil Otter. Fine by me. With SIMS taking the stage with Turbo Nemesis churning out the beats from his digital butter machine behind it was like déjà vu from the ‘Ruining My Life’ tour (Too-Er) last year…the only difference, for me, was this time it was locals from Ed Gein country in lieu of the Educated Consumers of B-more.

The local contingent consisted of El Guante (a Madison poet in the Saul Williams vein) & DJ Pain with an appearance from a Figurehead. They rocked a few songs & shared some power lyrics to get the growing crowd moving. Good people.

SIMS on next w/ Turbo. Fave emcees showing up out of the Nice Guy Eddie blue is the kind of thing worth the 8 dollar admission alone. P.O.S. made it out for a few minutes to grab hold of the second mic. Aside from the mad passionate energy sweat left onstage SIMS brings a flow singular to himself up to the microphone that, wrapped up with the Turbo Nemesis rope, forms songs shaking both brains & legs. The strongest track on his ‘Lights Out Paris’ disc is 15 Blocks (“Thank God for Doomtree/Thank God for Lazerbeak”). Inside that track is a lyric, simple & potent, that equals the original Minnesota Poet, Bobby Z…“My generation is the seeds of Vietnam…” Pure truth.

Mac Lethal up next. Mac seems to be enjoying a steady diet of Cutty Sark and KC barbeque of late, so much so that there hasn’t been time to visit the local barbershop, and now has an appearance weirdo enough to match his music. He explained to the audience that Vh-1 called him to join up the White Rapper Show where he could win 100 grand, the chance to bask in the glow of a real life big time record exec, and a gift certificate to Appleebees. Woah-uh! The hilariously brutal dis flow followed. Somewhere during the set the record machine pooped out & Mac Lethal took the opportunity to rant about his Midwest roots patriotism and fighting terror by watching Fox Newz. After about 45 minutes my arm & neck knew they’d be sore on the morrow. “Throw your souls up.”

We didn’t stick around for much of P.O.S.’ set as we had more than two hours of snowy road in front of us. Turned out, halfway between the Cesspool & Readstown the road almost won, but not this time you bastard. Fuck you road. US Highway 14 probably calls it a ‘too-wah’.