Brian Slattery photo
Sketch Tha Cataclysm at Three Sheets.
“Hello several people, rap professionals, and various cool people,” said Sketch Tha Cataclysm from the Three Sheets stage, as he and fellow New Haven hip hop stalwart Mo Niklz hosted a group of touring artists from Chicago for a night of high-energy indie hip hop.
A small but enthusiastic audience stayed close for that Wednesday night show, which included performances by Chicago-based artists Aplacecalledhell, Tomcantsleep, and Killvongard.
Aplacecalledhell started off the night with moody, introspective beats that sampled from everything from sermons to Daniel Johnston to create a worldview of desperation. Rapper Monzy unleashed bar after bar over it all, even if he found his “freak flag at half mast,” as he put it. Fittingly for the name of the project, his set felt like dispatches from down below, though they were never devoid of hope. His perspective was a source of strength and clarity, with the best songs coming on with the fury of a street corner preacher. “I made the best of a worst-case scenario,” he rapped toward the end of the set, and it was easy to believe him. Yet at the end of the set, he broke into a big smile.
Where Aplacecalledhell drew its material from social malaise, Tomcantsleep took a more confessional tone, mining his personal struggles and the mistakes of his past for inspiration (“This one’s about me being an idiot,” one song began). A little humor went a long way; at one point he described himself as “not dumb enough, not smart enough,” and at another, he offered a sarcastic prayer to Jesus for strong drinks. He also displayed an intense self-awareness: “It’s hard to run away when you’re running from yourself,” he rapped, “and your self just wants to run into random nooks in hell.”
Buoyed by hard beats from Killvongard, Tomcantsleep proved an apt bridge for the act to follow.
That was none other than New Haven’s own Sketch the Cataclysm, member of the 50x50s but on Wednesday night performing solo on the microphone. Sketch delivered his trademark high-density wordplay and uptempo beats, even as he made room for more introspective moments as well (see video). Sketch used all the Three Sheets space, from the stage to the floor, sometimes standing tall, sometimes sitting, sometimes on his knees. The varied songs drew hearty applause from the visiting artists; toward the end of the set, there was even time for Niklz to take a sweeping scratch break from the electronic turntables.
It was left to Chicago rapper Killvongard to close out the night, which he did with raps that laced incisive social criticism with a healthy dose of humor.
“This song is about me — and possibly you, dude,” he intoned at the beginning of one song, his self-deprecation unable to hide both his refreshing, conversational rap style as well as innovative beats that were sometimes dense textures of rhythm, sometimes a loop of an aggressively plucked cello. He ended his set, making fun of himself more than ever, with a song that he described as “my swan song, my ‘Bye Bye Bye,’ my ‘I Did It My Way.’ ” It was about the internet, and he wrote it during the pandemic, two facts which mock-irritated him now. But over a sample of upright bass and congas, the lyrics turned out to be some of his funniest and more incisive yet.
“We’re gonna turn the whole bar into an NFT” and “make someone rich,” he said. Then got at the nature of the hall of mirrors of social media about as well as anyone, with a single repeating two-word phrase: “Life imitating life, imitating life, imitating life, imitating life … ”
