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Shrapknel.
Dying in hospice. Shedding the uniform known as your body. Name-checking Milford. All these topics and more flew through bar after bar of hip hop, as six acts from near and far burned through their sets to the delight of a good-sized audience who had come to hear them at Cafe Nine.
Connecticut’s own Ricky Swift went first on the mic, offering a confessional, honest set that didn’t shy away from feelings. “I’m a poet of emotions, devotions, and sometimes fists,” he rapped. He included a song about being a hospice worker. “First time I saw her cry and I didn’t feel a thing,” he rapped about one of his patients, but his delivery and the surrounding music put the lie to that. He felt, he felt it all, seeing how messy and complicated death could be, with squabbling relatives and fearful patients.
His vulnerability became his most obvious strength. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been but that doesn’t mean I’m OK,” he rapped. “Failing to die when I was five could have been the greatest mistake of my life.” His lyrical openness was matched by his delivery, as he screamed some lyrics off mic, over wistful, keening beats.
But it wasn’t meant to be a recipe for despair. “We’ve had a lot of fun here,” he said, and seemed to mean it. Baring your soul could be freeing.
At first glance, Connecticut rapper Old Self, a.k.a. Brian Springsteen, could seem like Ricky Swift’s tonal opposite, starting with a sample of a voice intoning: “hot dog eating contest? I’m listening!”
“Let’s all step up!” Springsteen said to the crowd, and they moved closer to the stage. He then unleashed song after song full of his trademark humor, most of it directed at himself. But a closer listen suggested Springsteen and Swift had more in common than it might appear. HIs humor pointed to an essential seriousness, of lightness as a matter of survival.
“What’s my age again? What’s my age again?” he rapped over a heavy beat. “I’m not going out, I’m thinking about staying in.”
Like Swift, Springsteen’s honesty could be disarming. “This next one’s about Milford. Make some noise if you’re from Milford!” Nobody made a sound, and then everyone laughed. “Hey, I lived there in my mother’s basement,” Springsteen said, and then offered a startlingly serious song about regrets for past behavior. “I bought a smart phone to do some dumb shit,” he rapped. “Import the drugs, export destruction.”
Rhode Island’s Jesse the Tree was up next, and in a sense, he split the difference in tone between Ricky Swift and Old Self, with good-natured lyrics and an easy flow.
“New Haven! Love this place,” he said. “Cafe Nine — last time I was here, I was 12,” he said. He had songs about smoking weed back when it was illegal, songs and banter alike full of self-deprecating humor as he rapped over beats that ranged from warm jazz samples to cold, precise electronic music. By the time he came down off the stage to the floor near the end of his set, heads were in full bob.
“The next act is going to blow your britches off,” he said when his set was over, and people bathed him in applause. “You better tighten those britches, because they’re getting blown right off.”
He was referring to Another Planet — Brooklyn-based rappers Phiik and Lungs — whose rat-a-tat flow and call and response as they traded verses brought the energy in the room up a notch. While the two rappers distinguished themselves and each other with their rapid-fire delivery, their range of beats also kept the ear engaged, waiting for the next surprise, as the soundscape moved from samples, congas, and voices to a steady drone interrupted only occasionally by a beat marker, as the rappers’ flow rocketed over the top.
Where Phiik and Lungs blended their styles together as rappers, Curly Castro and PremRock in Shrapknel used two distinct rapping styles to create a rich whole. Where Castro was slower-paced, declarative, more Caribbean influenced, PremRock was intricate and allusive. They struck a dynamic balance, over a tasty selection of beats based in jazz and complex rhythms. They kept the energy level high through sheer skill; people gathered close to the stage to be near it, and to take in some of the lyrics.
“I won’t miss my human form, it’s just a uniform,” they rapped. “The things we do to belong.” This had a certain irony given the way Shrapknel was blazing its own way, to the delight of the crowd. By the end of the set, the crowd was shouting the group’s name, over and over.
They also set the stage for the last group to come on by paying some respect. “Shout out to Sketch tha Cataclysm,” PremRock said, “for believing in the same thing for this long.”
That belief was faith in hip hop, a devotion rewarded as Sketch and musical partner Deto 22 picked up the mics as the 50x50s.
“I could probably write a paragraph about everybody that’s on the bill tonight,” Sketch said, as he praised Swift’s emotional rawness, Old Self’s humor, Jesse the Tree’s smooth flow, the uncanny meshing of styles in Another Planet, and the charisma and great beats in Shrapknel.
The 50x50s then showed how they were fit to join them. Over a series of complex, syncopated beats, shot through with Latin touches, Sketch and Deto traded lines back and forth with ease, doubled up on choruses for strength, and served as each other’s hype man when one of them had a longer verse to himself. It was all more than enough to hold the audience in place.
Halfway through their set, Sketch left the stage with his microphone and set up right in front, just a foot or so away from the first audience member. Deto offered a mock-quizzical gesture, asking Sketch to explain why he was down there.
“I love the people,” Sketch said.
“And the people love you,” Deto answered.
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