MADLIB with J-ROCC and MYMANHENRI at the Great Hall, Thursday, January 19. Rating: NNN
A bit of snow didn’t stop a horde from storming the Great Hall to see Stones Throw Records demigod Madlib.
The label’s eclecticism has long found favour in Toronto so it was unsurprising that the party – billed as the Madlib Medicine Show – sold out earlier this week.
From the queued up stairs came strains of local DJ mymanhenri’s opening set: a glut of accessible beat head shit like Flying Lotus, Onra, and back-to-back Black Star.
J-Rocc, a noted turntablist, wasn’t top billed but definitely a draw. Dancing all the while, he played an hour’s worth of breaks, raw rap and iconic sample flips as well as reverentially showcasing the work of the late J Dilla, Lord God of most everyone in the building.
It was a party set for rap fans. We nodded along to De La Soul’s Shoomp and a Flying Lotus remix of Slum Village’s digi-opus Raise It Up, and shouted praise when J-Rocc interpolated the trembling piano loop of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Shimmy Shimmy Ya back into it’s source, Stevie Wonder’s Knocks Me Off My Feet.
Finally, Madlib emerged from behind the Great Hall’s red curtains, nursing a glass of red wine with his trademarked silver cuffs encircling both wrists. Unlike the intensely animated J-Rocc, Madlib kept his head down bouncing to his own beat.
Madlib wasn’t playing for the crowd – he was at work – so the mood shifted from playful to geeked-out observance. It was like he’d come straight from digging at Cosmos Records and just had to play out his finds, all rare and funky and bass, bass, bass.
And most were there for this curated dissonance: a rare glimpse into Madlib’s hermetically sealed mind.
Read an interview with Madlib here.
