Raekwon, Smif-N-Wessun, Joell Ortiz, Large Professor, Neek The Exotic and Skyzoo played Prospect Park
July 15th, 2011 by chocko
Raekwon The Chef
Smif-N-Wessun
Joell Ortiz
Large Professor and Neek The Exotic
Skyzoo
The annual Celebrate Brooklyn! shows at Prospect Park featured a hip hop lineup last weekend courtesy of Lyricist Lounge. The performance area was packed and the crowd was eager to hear some real hip hop. Skyzoo started off the night with songs from his new mixtape that just dropped titled “The Great Debater.” Skyzoo got the crowd hyped, however he rarely performed to the audience on the left side. It was pretty weird and cats around me were noticing. He worked the middle and stage left but left the rest of us out in the cold. He closed with the bass in your face “Speakers On Blast” from his second release with Duck Down Records titled “Live From The Tape Deck.”
Large Professor and Neek The Exotic performed next. Just a quick recap in case your memory’s a little foggy, but Large Pro was a member of the trailblazing hip hop group Main Source and is a legendary producer who’s worked with Nas on Illmatic, A Tribe Called Quest, and Kool G. Rap…just to name a few. Neek is a NYC native who was on the Main Source track, “Fakin The Funk” and has worked with Large Professor during the recording of his independent releases, “Exotic’s Raw” and “Exotic Species.” They both tag-teamed for a new album which came out earlier in the year titled “Still On The Hustle.” They performed a no-nonsense set of dope rhymes and the show was definitely picking up. The crowd was receptive and it was nice to hear the new stuff sprinkled in with the old hits and familiar songs. Get their new album now!
The Brooklyn MC, Joell Ortiz got a huge response from the the crowd. Ortiz came with the goods and performed the most energetic, crowd pleasing set of the night. Ever since his involvement with the hip hop super group, Slaughterhouse, Ortiz has been more popular than ever. Ortiz is not to be messed with lyrically and his freestyle skills are one of the best. The hometown crowd ate up the the back to back performances of “Brooklyn” and “Brooklyn Bullshit.”
Smif-N-Wessun entered the stage, first Steele and then probably the most off the wall entrance I’ve seen a while….Tek comes out running with a baby stroller! Park Slope represent! The baby in the stroller making the grand entrance was Shaun Price, Sean Price’s little daughter. Sean Price was on hand and joined the Duck Down crew along with Buckshot and Rock (aka Tha Rockness Monstah) from Heltah Skeltah. These guys were no joke and performed a solid set with lots of hits going way back to the early 90’s. Hearing “Bucktown” live never gets old. Be sure to pick up the new Smif-N-Wessun album titled “Monumental” with all tracks produced by Pete Rock!
Raekwon The Chef of Wu-Tang Clan headlined the evening and stepped on stage with a man-purse…the soccer mom swagger seemed to be the running theme of the night. After the unsightly murse was placed down, The Chef got cooking and provided us with the food we needed in the form of hip hop classics. Or rather, pieces of hip hop classics…you were lucky if you heard 2 verses of a song. The norm was one verse and then a chorus, an explosion sound effect, some banter then on to the next song. Why perform a snippet of a song…I just don’t get it. If Springsteen performed only half of “Thunder Road” or cut “Born To Run” short in concert, the crowd would riot in the parking lot. Besides the shortened version of songs such as “C.R.E.A.M”, “Incarcerated Scarfaces”, “Ice Cream” and Wu bangers “Da Mystery of Chessboxin”, and “Triumph” it was a fun, solid hour of showmanship complete with plenty of audience participation. The Ol’ Dirty Bastard tribute performance of “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” was definitely a highlight with the crowd rapping along to Raekwon’s take on the classic ODB track. Check out the videos below of Raekwon’s performance of “C.R.E.A.M.” and Smif-N-Wessun along with Sean Price doing “That’s Hard.”
Tags: brooklyn, celebrate, concert, hip hop, rap, rapper, show
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