Freestyle Fellowship – “Gimmie” (Decon, 2011)
A few weeks back I caught the Freestyle Fellowship performing to a depressingly small SF crowd and hey guess what they still can rap circles around everyone in this and the other galaxy. Young rappers should be forced to sit through their stage show and take notes. Self Jupiter in particular is a monster, the most commanding rap performer I’ve seen in years. Dude just exudes a weird, over-serious and almost mystical charisma. The fact that he remains so underrated – even within his own crew – is one of the great tragedies of hip hop.
It’s bizarre to me how the more conservative West Coast underground artists that emerged after them – Murs, Planet Asia (I presume? He has about 25x the number of Twitter followers that Jupiter does) – can still draw mad cargo shorts to shows while these guys have been reduced to performing in front of crowds of comprised of little more than their friends and a few lonely white rap nerds (raises hand). Yeah they’ve made some bad career decisions but they can fucking rap. Isn’t that what matters?
The Promise is out now.
I wasn’t at this show but I was at the other FF show a few months prior at the exact same venue. The night had some better promotion but the show was crowded so have some hope that people still appreciate them young lonely white rap nerd.