Two Saturdays ago I saw Joey Bada$$, a 19 year-old rapper from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, perform in New York City at Irving Plaza. The concert was the first of two New York shows marking the conclusion of Joey’s U.S. tour, a crazy run of 36 shows in 46 days, and it was absolutely bonkers.
The night began with solid performances by Kirk Knight, CJ Fly and other members of the Pro Era collective, which Joey Bada$$ heads, before the headliner took the stage to an enormous roar from the crowd. There’s a thing that happens at hip-hop shows, which is unique to them in my experience, when the opening acts are over and the audience senses that the performer they’re really there to see is about to take the mic: the mass of people, mostly male, already packed into an insanely tight throng somehow manages to condense itself even further in a frenetic push to be closer to the action. As Joey’s voice flowed through the speakers from off stage, a broiling whisper of the opening lines of “Summer Knights,” the intro to his enormously acclaimed debut mixtape 1999, the crowd at Irving Plaza slammed forward, nearly wiping me off my feet.
Hip-hop, more than any other life musical performance, feeds off of the connection between artist and audience. There’s usually one dude, maybe two, on the stage, with a mic and a DJ in the background, and that’s it. Rappers use a host of tricks and devices to maintain the audience’s energy, and Joey’s mastery of those tools was on full display that night. He controlled the room for close to two hours by hyping up the crowd between songs, leading a round of the always popular game “f--- that side” (go ahead and Youtube “f--- that side hip hop show”), and breaking off his own flow to let us scream the words to lyrics that have become as meaningful to us as they undoubtedly are to him.
Early in his performance he told us (paraphrasing here) that he had been looking forward to this show for weeks, and since it was his return home, he wanted to make sure that this New York show was the dopest of the whole tour. If you want to get a crowd of New York hip-hop fans amped up, a good way to do so is to challenge them to prove that they’re liver, more energetic, and can smoke more weed than the rest of the country.
After his last song, Joey addressed the crowd a final time, and told us something totally unlike anything I’ve ever heard at a rap concert. Joey’s first studio album, titled B4.DA.$$, also the name of the tour, is due out very soon (although it doesn’t have an official release date yet), and through radio appearances, magazine articles, and features on other rappers songs, it is clear that his backers are doing their best to push Young Badass into the mainstream. Joey spoke to that at the close of his set, telling us that this tour was special to him because it gave him one last chance to play small venues where he could connect with the fans that had been following him from the beginning. He told us that starting pretty soon there wouldn’t be many shows like this one. He told us that although we’d be able to see him, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see us as well. It was almost like he was telling us goodbye.
It was actually a really moving moment. We think of entertainers as being on a non-stop, furious fight to the top, seeking maximum exposure by growing their fan base to its largest possible extent. In an era when fame is commonly, and accurately, calculated by number of Twitter followers, growing the brand has become the artist’s endgame. Joey Bada$$ is no different. He’s got real talent as a lyricist and as a performer, and he has the kind of ASAP Rocky/Danny Brown charisma that catches the attention of casual fans and record executives alike. He’s going to be a star. His acknowledgment of that fact at the end of his set was not boastful nor was it an apology, but almost like a gentle warning.
On some level he was also talking to his homies on stage, the motley members of the Pro Era. The group is essentially a bunch of friends who grew up together and grew up rapping together. Imagine knowing that this passion that you developed throughout your life was going to bring you to fortune and fame that you couldn’t possibly share with the people with whom you shared that passion. Imagine watching one of your best friends stand on the edge of stardom and know that he’s going to a place where you won’t ever really be able to join him. That’s not to say that the other member of Pro Era aren’t talented, some of them really are. But there’s a difference between being the Man and being part of the team.
It’s a tired point that in our culture, we crave total access to celebrities. Hip-hop culture is no different. It’s not enough to see the music videos anymore; we want to see the behind the scenes footage while looking at Instagram photos from the set. Anybody with enough time on their hands can troll a rapper on Twitter until they get some kind of response. With that kind of access comes a higher degree of polishing, a constant image creation and maintenance that can never let down its guard. There’s money to be made every time an artist presses send. Jay Z told us he wasn’t a business man, he was a business, man, back in 2005, and it’s far truer today than it was then. I really appreciated Joey Bada$$ taking a moment to connect face to face with his hometown supporters, the listeners who have given him the credibility and the capital to become something larger than he ever could have dreamed. We’ve been with him since before the money (B4.DA.$$). The first stop of his European tour was Tuesday in Scotland. Joey Bada$$ is about to become a business, man.
