KWELI! LIVE! FREE!

I definitely need to monitor people's websites because I would have completely missed one of the best shows I've ever seen. Luckily I decided to take a break from reading my book on my way to brooklyn and do the sudoku in the free newspaper they give out by the subway. The little ad said the show was at 7 and I showed up at 5:30 and the line outside the soho apple store was around the corner and there was easily a hundred people. Within an hour this number more than doubled and the people began to pool around the door up until concert time in hopes of sneaking. Since the apple store employees are about as good at running massive concerts as they are at not looking like nerds, there was massive cutting by late people, no communication about when anything was getting started and a whole bunch of pissed people in line. This mother of two next to me was ready to "come out of character" on the apple store employees, as were most of us who had been waiting up to two hours by this time, but once we got in the door we all started getting pumped. I decided exploited apple's lack of management to get a prime position on the left side where my vertically challenged friend could watch the show standing on a bench. I, on the other wand, was staring at the bald spots of 3 or 4 people that made me feel short. It really didn't matter because when he came out he was still only 20 feet away. He began with one of those songs that I haven't uploaded to my computer, and thus haven't heard in a year. He was rocking through a few songs and then they cut on some radio hip hop beats for some freestyle. Then this newcomer Jean Grae came up there and did a little freestyle and just blew everybody away. She was coming up with some impressive rhymes at a lightning pace with references to let you know it wasn't rehearsed. We were thinking earlier it was weird that he would be doing this show for free at a SoHo store for a big corporation when he could playing with his daughter (who was looking bored, sitting on top of the speaker despite the hundreds of people in front of her). But his intention appeared to be introducing Jean Grae to a new audience. And right when I'm thinking he's going to introduce the third member of blackstar, Ms. Grae does some of her album songs and I just as easily could have been listening to eminem's first album. The content was a lot less conscious and alot more battle. I remember one rhyme about 'stabbing ya with a catheter' that summed up the whole portion of the set. Then he went through some more songs and finished with get by. It was definitely the coolest thing i've done in nyc thus far and one of the better liver performances I've been to.