Roc Raida. If you know what he can do, you know you gotta see him whenever you get the chance. Turntablist extraordinaire, he is the kind of artist you could take your mom to, because he has tangible talent; it flows from his body through devices output to our ears. It is analogue; the performance itself alters what we hear, and more importantly, how we interpret what we are hearing. At the best of times his scratching between select samples is punctuated by the physical drop of the needle, into the relieving funk soul. You might feel the ‘music’ of it, but that’s a background substrate to the freestyle driven language of manipulated wax. When he is full on, it’s like seeing a stunt drummer, only the drum can do a lot more than go bong or bip or ratta tat tat. Yes, Roc Raida is all that.
And that is what I expected. I expected him to appear from the crowd into the booth all skillfully, dropping right into a little sumpin summin to get everyone’s attention. I mean, DJ Flagrant had all this skill and soul and the crowd was really warming up. There was this sense that everyone was kindof waiting to see Roc Raida, but it wasn’t an insurmountable inertia. So this was my frame of mind. I’m like, “okay, so it is taking a bit to get people souped up but a-souping they are doing so it might all work out.” But as he gets on the decks, people all push up and stand there and watch. And he plays some interesting mixes and warms up… rather slowly. I mean, after about two hours he had barely broke the heartbeat. It wasn’t bad – it was eminently danceable. It just didn’t evoke that “world class” vibe.
And yet, here we are… nearly antipodal.
I kept wondering what the hell was up. I mean, I just expected him to bring it. Sure, he did warm up and sure, he did end up giving a decent sampling of his style and skillset, but it lacked punch, and that is really quite surprising. Roc Raida’s style arises from a culture where battling is the way to force improvement and the X-ecutioners have made this a collaborative art form (the team weave incredibly complex structures together, often to the point of pulling acrobatic feats like switching between each table behind the back, flipping records under legs, etc.) The thing is, I’m not sure how well the battle based attitude fits in Melbourne.
For example, it is very common to find a break circle form at an average breaks/oldschool event. One of my favorite moves involves miming “taking” the head of a competitor and making as if it were willingly bobbing about the dancer’s lap. Some say juvenile, I say hilarious. Also. I went to “MC Babble” and had people tell me that battling is just unpleasant. I was interested enough to ask most of the people there, and there was a general consensus. Maybe this isn’t an accurate assessment of the general attitude, but I’ve come to realize that there is an aspect of the friendly Melbourne thing that somewhat interferes with my schema for an oldschool hip hop show.
I’m used to a bit of expectation from both sides. DJs coerce the crowd to interact with not just the beats or the samples, but with their personality and particular style, ultimately the participants anticipate the unfolding ad hoc structure, becoming as one with the creation of the sound. In turn, the crowd expects to be treated like every show must be the best so far. There is a lot of attitude at these shows, sure, but it doesn’t come down to arrogance or ego so much as a mutual agreement to rock it cocked. And Melbourne obviously appreciates the technique and sound of the genre, but I’m coming to suspect that might negate the value from a respectfully raw, humorous, in-your-face battle.
But so what. The people attending were awesome, seriously. What was lacking in luster was unspoiled by bad attitude. I seriously love this town. And I can’t even hate on the music. It was engaging, the energy was high, people had a great time. It made me want to check out more of those Friday nights to see if it was a fluke. I seriously haven’t had that much fun dancing with strangers in much, much too long. Melbourne, you sure do know how to cut a rug. All in all, I was glad to be there, but not overwhelmed by Roc Raida’s performance. He was good, but comeon, show us what you really got.
