Hip-hop force Curren$y played to a modestly packed Jannus Live last Thursday night, offering up a powerful and dexterous, albeit short, performance.
...Which is fine, but don’t open the night with two hours worth of anyone and everyone in your posse wandering on and off stage, yelling random generalities on smoking weed/poppin' bottles in a rapid fire array of random hip hop songs. Every once in a while, there’d be some semblance of performance by some instantly-forgettable emcee and posse, but nothing worthy of the phrase “opening act.” [End rant.]
Curren$y hit the stage around 10:15 p.m. and held the crowd in a strangle hold for an underwhelming half hour. But, where set time lacked, the New Orleans native’s verbal potency shined. A master of phrasing, cadence, and off-the-cuff freestyles, Currensy bounced from all sides of the stage, gesticulating, clearly feeling each song he’d penned.
Heavy on both his acclaimed mixtapes, Pilot Talk and Pilot Talk 2, Currensy played a set of song segments, almost an abbreviated best-of, and never let up until he left the stage. Occasionally, he’d motion to drop the beat and go off on these straight-off-the-dome freestyles lasting a good couple of minutes. You could almost see the struggle on his face, the mental wrestle, in spitting like this for hundreds of watchful eyes.
I think we all could’ve watched like, an hour more of this and still wanted more. Maybe it’s some sort of strategy to always keep us wanting more but dammit, we as music consumers really like you and demand you bend to our every will and play on stage for as long as we want you to! Right? Well, not really. Fresh off a brand new contract with Warner Records, Currensy’s holding the ball in this game now. He knows we’ll be watching his moves regardless of the length. [More photos after the jump.]
