SOUL EXPLORATION: two of four

thanks to Porschia, all flicks by US

walking up to the CRASH mansion in LA on Saturday night, i could already hear the bass thumping through a couple of sets of walls and bleeding onto the sidewalk outside. i thought, this is probably gonna be a good night. ArtDontSleep organized this show as part of their Soul Exploration series that features LA talent performing with out of town artists, the first show with Bilal, Sa-Ra and Orgone was pretty damn dope. understandably so, my expectation bar was set pretty high. i hadn’t seen PPP or Tiombe Lockhart live before and it is almost common knowledge that Blu and Ex can tear a stage from LA to Waco, so i felt pretty confident the show would deliver.

once inside i saw that Blu and Exile were already onstage. they performed a surprising amount of new material that showed edge and aggression when compared to the introspective and laid back Below The Heavens. Exile got on the MPC and cranked out some bangers for Blu to freestyle on and dude did his thing extremely well. afterwards, Blu invited Ex to rock the mic as well and Ex showed he can be as refreshing and fun rhyming as he can be on the boards. the set was all that hip hop should be; fun, engaging, dope and loud but i don’t really want to go on about how dope Blu is because he might start to think i like him.

then came Tiombe.

wow.

about 5 minutes into the performance i felt like an idiot for sleeping on her as long as i have. this Brooklyn bred songstress combines a soulful voice with ingenious lyrics over banging ass beats. her rendition of “Yellow Spaceships” left my jaw dragging on the club floor. Tiombe had charm and sensuality pumping out of the speakers as she continued to crack the audience’s head open with more and more funk and soul and all kinds of other elements that are pretty hard to classify.

following Tiombe were the evening’s headliners, PPP aka Platinum Pied Pipers.

if Blu and Ex were the young hip hop heads and Tiombe was the eccentric songstress, PPP were the cool, collected, grown and funky musicians.

immediately upon making their way to the stage Waajeed, Saddiq, Coultrain and Karma began to put a crick in the audience’s neck with their live instrumentation. Coultrain and Karma sung for most of the set while Siddiq and Wajeed held down the beat. after the amazement i went through with Tiombe, i was pretty sure she was going to be the non-rapping highlight of the night, but i’ll be damned if Coultrain and Karma didnt’ wake my ass up. Wajeed himself referred to Coultrain as being in the vein of Marvin Gaye due to his soulful and sensual singing. Karma blew me away with her range and emotion. they continued to perform new and old bangers for the remainder of the evening, until closing time came when they invited Detroit MC Invincible to step on stage and perform Shotgun off of PPP’s debut album.

Andrew Lojero and the rest of ArtDontSleep came through.

do yourself a favor, if you’re in southern cali, do not sleep on what LA has to offer.

peace