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Review: Spitkicker Tour at House of Blues, Chicago
The Spitkicker Tour's uncommonly varied lineup of hip-hop stars--Biz Markie, Talib Kweli , Pharaohe Monch, Common , and De La Soul --stuck to the common ground of hip-hop for this Chicago tour date: bumping to the beat. Pumping a fist in the air all night is great entertainment, but for such rap pioneers as were seen under this one tent, it proved more remedial than revolutionary.
The evening melted into a high-minded house party, broken up only by short, emcee-stoked rests between acts (not nearly as much stage-sharing as was promised at the outset of the tour). Opener Talib Kweli, out from the shadow of Black Star partner Mos Def, got his flow over the thump the best. The energetic, polite, sell-out crowd really shook the house to Kweli's two hits, "The Manifesto" and "K.O.S. (Determination)--nearly everyone knew the words. But with easy choruses all around (like that of new song "1, 2, 3, 4"), this quick-styler whipped things up almost as well with material from his forthcoming album. Pharaohe Monch's syncopated delivery matched the spitkicking demands of the tour's theme, but he lumbered through his set, as the even-larger Biz Markie did through his single song.
Acting as de facto host for the evening, Chicago's hip-hop hope Common put on a show himself. Time-warping through the hits and the costumes of black music's last 30 years, he framed hip-hop as a genre now free of race issues and reminded the crowd that the DJ is the foundation of it all (the latter point had been wordlessly made earlier during the flurries of DJ Hi-Tek's deep-scratch solos). The antics were a flashy bit of fun, but rapping other people's songs isn't Common's strength: no matter what it looked like, it all sounded the same. Things improved when Common performed his own material.
De La Soul stripped down its standout style, leaving the drum machine unembellished for much of the set. Many in the all-ages crowd did not seem to recall their first hit, "Me, Myself, and I," perhaps because the performance lacked the playful, bohemian mix of the original.
These rappers, variously credited with reviving intelligent hip-hop and socially conscious themes, have a way to go before the party-music essence of hip-hop serves them as well in the live setting as it has on record. If the packaged product here didn't live up to prior expectations, there was more than enough consolation in bouncing along as the entire lineup of artists brought the house down with an encore of Monch's memorable dance track "Simon Says."
