Cold weather and anticipation made for a friendly and intimate atmosphere as the doors opened at the Rock & Roll Hotel on Jan. 14.
Attendees mingled on the upper floor while throwing back cans of PBR. Generic hip-hop beats played ubiquitously to set the mood. And small groups of college-age boys stood outside hoping to scalp some last-minute tickets to the sold out show.
But on the ground floor through the cordoned stage area where the artists were still prepping with sound check, there came the explosively familiar sounds of a song that would be the highlight of the evening.
It was the chorus of “Who’s That? Brooown!” a track by Brooklyn trio Das Racist and the first song off their mixtape, “Shut Up, Dude.” In a genre as mercurial as hip-hop, it would still be an understatement to call the group an enigma. Think of them as sort of a blend of Gorillaz, Kid Cudi and the Harold and Kumar movies — stoner rap with a tinge of social commentary and racial satire but without all the annoying and excessive preaching. Even their name is multi-layered, being both a reference to influential hip-hop duo Das EFX as well as a street way of exclaiming “That’s racist!”
They’ve garnered substantial attention and popularity through the Internet and word of mouth, releasing their music for free on their website, www.dasracist.net, and making most of their money through live shows. The two frontmen, Himanshu “Heems” Suri and Victor Vasquez, met while studying at Wesleyan University and are joined by their hypeman Ashok “Dap” Kondabolu. Having embarked on their musical career in 2008, they’ve since become nothing short of local legends in the boroughs of New York City.
Their style can possibly be summed up in the following snippet off their track “All Tan Everything” from their mixtape “Sit Down, Man”: “Do the booty-ooty-alley-oop/Scooby-Doo doo on the Bally so my fanny’s cute/I’m my own identical cousin, just call me Patty Duke.” The song playfully swerves through a number of non-sequiturs while blithely making statements about racial identity and life as a minority in America. While it’s clear that they’re not the types to take themselves too seriously, there’s something about their delivery and charisma that makes them so much fun to listen to.
But for all the praise Das Racist deserves for their accomplishments through music and self-made marketing, their live show at the Hotel sadly did little to uphold expectations. They decided to cut down on costs by opting out of a DJ. And perhaps it was because of this that they seemed to have overcompensated on sound by shouting as a group, obscuring their lyrics into a garbled mess.
That isn’t to say that it wasn’t a fun show. Heems, who was clearly intoxicated by the time he got up on stage, would do the most to keep the crowd energized, whether it was by crowd surfing or dancing in a drunken stupor as Victor and Dap sang along to tracks like “Shorty Said.” While the lyrics were unintelligible, the ground-shaking beats would do more than enough to sustain the room’s energy.
Their act was admittedly unfulfilling as it clocked in at barely 50 minutes, but it was still a marvel to witness in person. As they play their live shows, Das Racist isn’t necessarily the kind of group you’ll appreciate more when considering their history, but understanding their humble beginnings could possibly make their music all the more worthwhile to listen to.
scho@theeagleonline.com