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And let the review begin.
Could it be such a late night for CMJ? Yessir. A 1-4AM show. But the city that never sleeps was surely awake.
The festivities included 1300 bands during the week, but this one included acts as far as Tel Aviv in The Kokoro, to our Los Angeles recent transplant Kosha Dillz. Usually CMJ shows suck or fall in the middle of somewhere, but if you manage to hit up Pianos, it always seems like someone is becoming quite famous there and it’s difficult to haul the people out.
Not in this case.
Here is Oy Vey CMJ, the creation of Kosha Dillz, bridging the gap of culture between Israel, Jewish stuff, and Street Rap. AKA a show where Inner City Kids plays with a dub step duo from Tel Aviv. It doesn’t make sense, but it does.
And let the review begin.
Soho Kings set off the night in pure fashion, with cool raps and a vibe of Kid Cudi meets Mike Posner vs the rap-and-singy thingy. Does that make sense? I think it kinda does. They have gadgets on stage and are in the mold of the college rapper-singer look. Follow that with Kosha Dillz rapping about specific niche articles such as garage sales or activities like “Hangin’ Out” and “What’s Going On Upstairs” can make you feel as if you are in a “Simon Says” experience. There is a lot of bossing around but sometimes you have to tell the crowd what to do and other artists can just play their music and not care what the crowd does. In this case, Kosha suffers from too much OCD too let them just be. Larry David meets Eminem meets aerobics class? Freestyle game phenomenal plus exercise. A win win for any attendee who is indulging in too much sweets for the upcoming Halloween. Just watch his new video, In Da Club.
The most engaging act of the night was definitely Dreams in Static, who features the singer Akie Bermiss wit a voice that is infectious and legendary in his own right of Northeastern Soul. I think this is the music that brings the grunge out of the cake. I know that could seem corny and cliche, but if you heard him sing, you would be proud. No one can sing the way he can.
Meet The Kokoro, who brings together all kinds of Israel and Electronic body suits, with the addition of hotness and opera trained singing. Their videos are crazy, and their live sound actually brought the energy heavily in the tiny room, with tons of Hebrew chatter amongst the crowd and eyes laid on the Israeli beauties.
To finalize our night of Rap, GrungeCake’s own Lil Esparo jammed to “Came Up” and boast illustrious raps for a 19-year-old newcomer in CMJ and represented Queens while DJ J Ronin from Brooklyn held down the in-between set festivities. Bar Mitzvah’s are for Kosha Dillz, but Barmitzfortune is the newness for Lil Esparo. Of course, it couldn’t be an Oy Vey! show without the cops coming to randomly search for “two tall Australian men with blonde hair”. Their search was unsuccessful.
And after the cops left Let us come to the point of 3:30AM. Inner City Kids is a Rap crew made up of so many kids that it is hard to keep track but emcees like Space Man, Flapjack, and Kontraband all help create the chaos of ICK sans Aaron Cohen, who was on tour with Method Man and Redman at the time in Ohio. No big deal.
While the night comes to an end, there are still foreigners from Denmark in the front. There are random indie rock bands mingling in the street with British accents. Kosha Dillz is still promoting fliers of the show after it is done, and the first ever official sponsored GrungeCake show is in the books.
Could it be so real? Yes. There were Brazilians at the show. There was a guy who played guitar for Wallpaper, and there were other people who said they were in the music business but were most likely drunk. Good night New York and farewell CMJ. Pianos was truely an Oy Vey! Musical to say the least.
