Capitol Hill Block Party is here, kidlings, with more bands than ever before! So make sure you go to support all the hiphop like the Physics, Common Market, Champagne Champagne, and... wait, is that all? Hey fuck it—dude from the Hold Steady did a track with P.O.S, and once is good enough for me!
Before all that, though, catch the long-running night presented by the good folks at Project Mayhem, Foot Traffic on Thursday, now at the Re-bar with Ricky Pharoe, Canary Sing, Mic Flont & Khanfidenz (Mind Movers), Suntonio Bandanaz aka Asun, DeRoxs (Wolfpakk) and DJ B-Girl and the Elefaders.
On Friday at Rendezvous, you can satisfy your fix for a sweatbox basement rap jam at the fourth installment of The Corner, featuring the Step Cousins—that being the marvel team-up of Macklemore and XP aka Xperience of Oldominion. XP himself has some crazy material out right now with both Oldominion's excellent (and currently very limited- release crew reunion LP) Make Happy and They, and the album from his side crew Sound Asylum (no Dave Pirner, damnit). You've also got Grayskul's almost frighteningly fierce JFK, the (for now) slept-on storyteller known as LaRue, and Soul the Interrogator, who will be dropping his Prawdukt LP in August. The Corner just keeps on jamming, man, packing in enthusiastic crowds that could teach a thing or three to these half-dead arm-crossin'-ass crustaceans infesting most local shows. Get down, get into it.
Lyrical miracle alert! All MCs, report to battle stations! Sunday and Monday, July 27 and 28, backpackers will have their own personal Bonnaroo, as battle rap's patron saint Canibus will be doing two, count 'em two, nights at Studio Seven. Bear witness to literally THOUSANDS of bludgeoning bars devoted to mind-boggling displays of lyrical supremacy. Both nights will also feature Dylan Dillinjah (yes, THAT Dylan, from Making the Band 2—the one so hilariously portrayed by Dave Chappelle. "I rip and I rhyme, I rhyme and I rip!") Openers on Sunday are Khingz and Asun & Kasi. On Monday, peep out Waves of the Mind and Yirim Seck setting things off.
Okay, so yeah, I stopped being excited about Canibus pretty much the second I got his debut album home (back in good ol' '98) and heard the execrable "Rip Rock"—or maybe it was the "Ghetto Superstar" video (he was decked out head to toe in silver body paint like he was at goddamn Burning Man)? After a lengthy career of stall-outs and bad choices, it's hard to pick just one place and time. But that's just me. I know the man still has a solid fan base—devoted backpackers who hang on his every multi-multisyllabic word. So there's no reason that you, the devoted 'Bis fan, should not get your cranium lasered by his expandable mandible. Or something to that effect.
