Juice, The Crest, Fall Guys, and DJ Pain 1 at High Noon Saloon
Juice
Decider stumbled its way through a veritable ocean of puffy jackets Wednesday at the High Noon Saloon to witness an encouraging display of unity within the Midwest's hip-hop underground. With two turntables and a laptop at his disposal, Madison's gum-chomping hip-hop encyclopedia, DJ Pain 1, warmed up an inattentive audience with a seamless rap-history lesson. When he wasn't scratching over the new-school swagger of Clipse's "Grindin'," he spun airtight mash-ups of classics, including one between Eric B. and Rakim and The Notorious B.I.G.
Pain 1 stayed put for a set in his duo Fall Guys, as his partner MC Starr gripped the microphone with white-knuckle intensity. During the fiery set-opener "Small War," Starr's veins stuck out of his neck as he earnestly spat his gritty, gesture-laden rhymes over Pain 1's stylish East Coast stomp. "I don't feel that industry shit!" Starr yelled between songs, while pulling his digital camera out to snap his modest, arm-waving audience. Starr's statement proved to be a smidge ironic when the duo sampled "Can't Believe It" by Auto-Tuned industry hack T-Pain for a set-closing duet with The Crest's A.D., entitled "WisCANsin."
Up next, The Crest brought an amiable flow of roughneck wit, whimsical free-styling, and nostalgic beats, as the growing audience slammed its way to the front. Opening with the quirky stutter of "Heart Shaped Box," Jack Cracker and A.D. swapped rapid-fire lines while pouncing on the stage with gorilla-like intensity. Oddly enough, the redheaded DJ Skrabble spent the trio's last few numbers awkwardly showing Juice's manager, Belle Wise, how to use his CD player. Juice's DJ had flaked out, forcing the rapper to rely on a CDR.
After sending "big shouts" out to practically everything with a pulse (all the emcees in the room, Obama, Madison, etc.), jolly show promoter Gary Knowledge introduced Juice, the night's headliner and a legendary Chicago freestyle veteran. Clad in a blue and gold sweatshirt, Juice punctuated his witty punch lines with flailing arm movements as Wise understandably approached the mixing board like an 80-year-old afraid to dip her toes in a swimming pool. Juice glued his set together with impressive freestyles and drunken stage banter, including a rather homophobic diatribe on Auto-Tuned vocals. The audience flailed its arms around wildly as Juice cued up numbers from across his four-album discography. Arguably, the show’s highlight came from an eruptive rendition of "Real Hip-Hop," a engaging look at his experience as a battle rapper. "Signed or unsigned / I'm not platinum on wax / but I'm platinum in the streets," Juice shouted as his set closed with 2001's "Sincerely," a bitter perspective on corporate hip-hop. The number effectively sent one mustachioed 40-something, who kept getting on stage to invite Juice to an after-party, into an erratic dance frenzy.
