Alessandro Powell
dUECE bUG and Chuck Nickels.
“Hey yo, how come every time I grab the mike it’s on?” dUECE bUG asked. “We stand up for hip-hop.”
The Bridgeport-based bUG — a.k.a. Kenny Mercer — raps like every Beastie Boy rolled into one. And much as the Beastie Boys were punk rockers first, Mercer’s career started on the regional hardcore metal scene. He’s gone on the Warped Tour and opened for Redman, Method Man, and AFI. He spearheads the Full Blast Movement, a summer tour that is his brain child, and which made a stop at Cafe Nine this past Saturday. Since 2010 Full Blast has strutted across Connecticut to unite the underground, rounding up musicians and rappers and tying them together with ever-present DJ Elija Malone.
Justin Flores warmed up the room, playing his sticker-ridden acoustic guitar with a certain bravado — especially with Malone on the board and bUG on drums — that assured us we had come to the right place.
Norwalk-based Law Music’s technique blurred the line between armed robbery and entertainment. The intense, steady rhythm of his lyrics started heads bopping even as he exhorted us to put our hands up.
New Haven’s own Kris Smalls followed Law’s in-your-face performance with an R&B twist on underground rap. Curled up on stage in skinny pants and a black v-neck, Smalls’s mellow voice made his set feel like a love song to rap, with a plethora of criminal references surfacing through his soulful crooning.
Comprised of two white dudes from Wooster, Mass., The Broc summoned all the heads from outside Cafe Nine on the corner to the end of the block. Frontman Danny Fantom performed in a collared shirt and a fedora, more Buena Vista Social Club than N.W.A. But don’t judge a rapper by his cover. As the crowd grew, The Broc geared up. Clutching his stomach, Fantom spat superb verbiage with a smile across his face. If Law and Smalls piqued our interest, The Broc earned attention with a practiced ease.
Dinero — another Connecticut local — had a voice that sounded like a Jeep driving slow over gravel. Now and then he revved up for a chorus, but his conversational tones and patterns made his set feel like a freestyle with old friends.
For his own full set, dEUCE bUG took to the front of the stage when he rapped, his eyes wide, spitting so fast his voice topped off and his tone broached punk rock. He took a break from his machine-gun speed to crouch and scream like a Metallica-Action Bronson hybrid. “Every night we take a photo from the stage,” bUG said, and both the crowd and the performers leaned back simultaneously while bUG and stage mate Chuck Nickels took selfies on their smart phones with their backs to the audience.
Nickels backed dEUCE up on stage and took a few bars for himself, too. With a style somehow simultaneously loose as his T‑shirt, tight as his flat brim, Nickels somehow chills out dEUCE’s vibe. Surely without his cool smile on that stage, nothing would have stopped the mosh pit. And so this reporter and his delicate camera thank Nickels for his most excellent presence.
As dEUCE disassembled his drum kit quicker than a sheep riding a lightning bolt, the hip-hop collective 58 Dreams of Scrilla took the stage so subtly you’d think Cafe Nine installed trap doors. They then annexed the front third of the audience by the end of their first song.
There were nowhere near enough microphones to go around. It became impossible to tell where the crowd ended and the band began.
As p.m. turned to a.m., performers were still facing off, going a capella. One rapper seized on the floor, only to be resuscitated by whoever was not holding microphones, like Judas Priest impersonating old-school Baptists.
The 58DOS ruckus disappeared as abruptly as it had shimmied onstage, like a squad of rhyming ninjas. They circled up on Crown Street, rapping and making a dance floor across the yellow lines in front of Cafe Nine. In retrospect, this reporter should have recorded that also. But at least I am here to tell you about 58DOS, and that you should definitely go and see them, wherever they’re allowed to play next.