Well, I went to Bumbershoot the other day … and … I wasn’t impressed. It seemed like it could have been a good event this year, but unfortunately, time just didn’t permit me to do as many things as I wanted to do.
To start things off, I woke up late (which isn’t a big surprise) which means that I arrived at Bumbershoot a good 2hrs late. I’m going to blame half of it on my friend … because … well … I can. Once there, I attempted to go to the film festival, and that just didn’t happen. I went to the film festival last year and was simply impressed by the quality of films that the directors produced. For those who haven’t been, the films aren’t your typical gun, gun, drug, fight, kill movies that you see in the movie theaters. These films are short and pack a strong message. Anyways, to make a long story short, I got to the film festival late, there was a huge lineup, and I couldn’t wait because it was only a short time before the Nas concert was due to start.
Since I had a little time to spare, I figured I could go check out some break dancing and such at there stage … wrong. They were located inside of a building that didn’t hold vary many folks and the line for that was insanely longer than the line for the film festival. So that settled that, no film festival and no break dancing / emcee battle for me.
So, off to the Nas concert I went, and, unimpressed I stayed. Public Enemy was the opening act for the Nas concert, and as much as I like Public Enemy, I can’t help but to think that PE was a hit 10yrs ago. I don’t know the lyrics to their songs anymore, you won’t find their album in my changer these days, and you hardly ever hear about them anymore. So I ask why oh why were they scheduled? I must admit that they did put on a good performance, holding true to everything they used to do including the clock around Flava Flav’s neck and dancers who move like old school military personnel. It was a good performance, but one that I would have actually enjoyed to watch 10yrs ago when they were popular.
Nas however, unlike Public Enemy, put on a rather bland performance. The stage consisted of him and his DJ. This might not sound all that bad, but when songs come on that obviously call for backup singers, it sucks to hear that come from a record the DJ is spinning. Then, Nas just sounded rough. Maybe he was sick or something, but his voice just did not match what you hear on any of his recordings. The worst part though, was that he did a poor job of spitting his lines. I know emcees usually take breaks and let their DJ’s or assistant performers fill in the gaps, but he was missing so many lines that his DJ couldn’t even fill in all the gaps. Then at one point, it actually looked like Nas forgot a portion of his lyrics. He just stopped rapping, looked confused, mumbled a bit, and then picked up in the middle of a line. It could have been intentional, but it just looked odd and unplanned.
In the end, I just wasn’t impressed with what I got for the money. In part, I must blame myself for part of my misfortunate when it came to Bumbershoot. I showed up late which made it impossible to do even a fraction of what I planned on doing due to the amount of people that showed up. The other part though, I put solely on poor planning and execution on the part of the performers and Bumbershoot workers. Oh well, maybe next year will be better. Oh, and next year I’ll make sure to bring my camera so I can take some flicks of the place.
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