Black Sheep/Etivan and Das EFX with Jairobi, Sadat X and Other Special Guests at Brooklyn Bowl 1/15/15

Black Sheep and Das EFX with Jairobi, Sadat X and Other Special Guests

Brooklyn Bowl

January 15, 2015

As a child of the 80s and teenager of the 90s, the very beginnings of hip-hop’s golden is a period that I fondly remember. I can remember watching Yo! MTV Raps with Ed Lover and Dr. Dre during the weekdays and with the legendary Fab 5 Freddy on the weekends, and religiously listening to DJ Kool Red Alert on KISS FM and Kid Capri on WBLS every Friday and Saturday – and making mixtapes from their shows. I also remember saving up my allowance and running over to the Nobody Beats the Wiz on 63rd Drive and Queens Blvd, to buy cassette tapes which were much cheaper than CDs; in fact, some of my first purchases included Das EFX’s Dead Serious (on digalog tape!), Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black, EPMD’s Business Never Personal, Redman’s Whut? Thee Album (on CD), Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in The Life Of … and several other things. At the time, I would rummage through the Wiz’s stacks every month or so, and it continued throughout a significant portion of my life.

So while at Brooklyn Bowl (the unofficial home office of JOVM) for Black Sheep and Das EFX, I was immediately brought back to those days, so it was kind of surreal to be covering the show and be standing around what turned out to be a virtual national emcee convention – and all of these guys, were guys I spent hours upon hours listening to on the radio, listening to their albums and dreaming of going to their shows. I wound up chatting here and there with one of the guys in the Beatnuts, shook hands with Dres of Black Sheep, got a picture with Jairobi, was standing near Skoob of Das EFX, and apparently I had walked past Sadat X. And yes, I was fanboying a bit.

As far as the show, it was quite a bit of fun – Black Sheep (these days, just Dres and a DJ) had their usual high energy. Dres pulled out Jairobi for a couple of songs from their ETIVAN project, which I’ve personally never found all that interesting; however, Jairobi has clearly improved as an emcee over the last couple of years or so.

This was probably the most talkative Das EFX set I’ve seen with Krazy Drayz jokingly acknowledging that he may look a bit different than what some fans would remember. They also played more deeper cuts, playing things like "Looseys" and “Jussumen” off Dead Serious and “Freak It” “Baknaffekt” off Straight Up Sewaside among others.

Check out photos from the show below.

De La Soul’s “Buddy” automatically put me in a nostalgic mood. And holy shit, did I love that song.

Brian Williams doing The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” It’s still pretty funny.

Black Sheep

The DJ is hard at work y’all.

Here’s something for all of you old school heads: Jairobi, Chi-Ali and Dres on the stage simultaneously. My first thought was “Chi Ali is still alive?”