 "Photo: Richard Marks/Greyhound")
Hip-hop music proved to be respected by all races, colors, ethnicities and genders this past Friday in Reitz Arena in front of 1,200 spectators. With a sold-out performance by rapper Lupe Fiasco headlining the fall concert last year, many students like myself wondered if a double-headline act of rappers Maino and Fabolous could promote hip-hop at a Jesuit school in an ideal fashion.
When one thinks of Maino, one sees a muscular thug with a razor blade scar extending from his lip almost to his ear. Maino is, in fact, a thug by nature. Everything is in his lyrics and he did a bid in jail; however, Maino represents the fact that people can make a change for the good. St. Ignatius Loyola turned his life over to God after having his leg amputated due to a cannon ball shot, and Maino turned his life over to music as he did his time in prison.
Even though it should be about the music, whether one places an emphasis on lyrics, beats, or whatever, Maino's thug-like attitude had many of the students running up to his promotional table before the concert started begging to take posters, pleading with Event Services staff to meet him, or posing with the almost life-sized posters. But the mood of the entire Reitz Arena began to change when the lights were dimmed.
Maino's figure on stage demanded the crowd's presence as the DJ played a song with Akon on the hook singing, "You gon' remember my name." Loyola would be able to remember his name as he put on for his city representing Brooklyn every chance he could get.
Now readers, most of Loyola's population comes from Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and the New England region of the country, but when Maino shouted Brooklyn on stage, I could've sworn I thought I was in the heart of Flatbush with hands swinging in the air.
As Maino said hi to his haters, the crowd waved goodbye to their haters. Not to hate though, I don't think Maino got the memo that he was performing in Maryland. He made it rain with bills that had his face on it. "You can only spend that in Brooklyn," he said. Well, we go to school in Baltimore and the Maino currency hasn't caught up with the U.S. dollar. (I'm not even going to mention the Euro.)
Nonetheless, it was crowd engaging, and true fans scuffled around for those Brooklyn bills.
When the time came for the true main event, Fabolous, to perform, we experienced the hectic schedule of a performer. Fab showed up late to his concert here at Loyola due to another show he performed at a school in New Jersey, but when he did show, the real show began.
At my previous three years here at Loyola, I have never seen Reitz Arena as empty as I saw on Friday. I've seen more people in Reitz for basketball games when our team was down by more than 20. I've seen more people at the Honor's Convocation in Reitz on an early Saturday morning. I have even seen more people show up at the school's most unsupported sport in its history: volleyball.
Sure Fabolous was late, but when do concerts really start on time? Between the 10- to 15-minute wait for Fabolous, people hastily left the gym to get ready for their local ventures into the bar realms that Baltimore has to offer, but they missed out!
Fabolous, on stage with just a DJ and a hype-man, kept the heads in the crowd bobbing up and down as he performed a few songs from his latest CD, "Loso's Way" followed by old hits that took me back to car rides to my high school from the radio, and some of the hottest songs this year that he has been featured on.
Entertainers feed off of the crowd. The crowd feeds off of the entertainer. There is a mutual beneficial relationship. But most of the crowd was gone, and I felt like everyone who stayed owed it to Fabolous because with all of the girls who stayed in the audience screaming, he delivered and did his job as an entertainer.
As he was told to wrap his performance up because of time, Fabolous turns around to the DJ and says, "Can we use another word for wrap it up?"
The DJ looks back at Fabolous, queues in his hit single "Throw It In the Bag," and everyone in the crowd went nuts. But when things are done twice, the second time is better. So when the remix to "Throw It in the Bag" played, the concert was officially finished.
Fabolous, as he walked off stage, seemed happy and expressed his happiness to the crowd for staying even though he was late. While Fabolous wrapped his concert up and threw it in the bag: "I'm sure this performance was like taking candy from a baby."
~Keep Hip-Hop Alive
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