Underground hip-hop in Boston is dead. But don’t tell that to Mr. Lif, nor to the 500 rabid hip-hoppers who saw him Sunday night at the Middle East in Cambridge. Lif and his DJ, Fakts One, performed with Kabir and DJ Eliot Ness for a benefit for the Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia. While the focus of the performance was a call for peace in Afghanistan and for the United States to withdraw from Central Asia, the crowd wasn’t there for the cause. People came out for one reason: Lif’s amazing on-stage energy.
Following a lackluster opening by Cambridge’s Kabir with DJ Eliot Ness, due in part to the late arrival of the crowd, Mel King, one of the founders of the Rainbow coalition, took the stage to provide one of the many pleas for peace in Afghanistan. King begged the crowd not to put up with the Bush administration’s actions in Central Asia. While a simple enough message, no one actually listened.
The crowd chatted through speaker after speaker ignoring their messages of peace, and only took notice when Mr. Lif came to the stage.
Lif arrived to repeated shouts of “Def Jux!” ElP from Company Flow’s label, which Lif was recently signed to. Lif immediately tore into “Settle the Score,” with the crowd falling in to a rhythmic bob to Fakts One’s beat. Lif’s smooth- as-ice flow combined with Fakts One’s seamless turntable work held the crowd in rapture and guided them from song to song sprinkled with the occasional political message. After an especially well delivered rendition of “Because They Made It That Way,” Lif paused, held up a book of matches and yelled, “There’s gasoline on the constitution! Who’s got matches?”
Lif took a break halfway through the show to provide an opportunity for more representatives from the Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia to educate the crowd. Sadly, once again, the crowd tuned out until Lif came back on stage.
When he returned, Kabir joined him for an amazing freestyle. At one point he managed to rhyme Mt. Vesuvius with studious. The freestyle session made up for Kabir’s uninspiring performance earlier in the night.
Lif continued to work the crowd, constantly energizing the audience, pausing to raise his hand upward as a voice meter in concert with the ever-rising shrieks of the crowd, asking the crowd to scream and forcing Fakts One to switch tracks whenever Lif yelled “switch.”
The show closed with “Front on This” and the requested rendition of “Boston Flow,” his verse-form historical recap of the Boston underground scene, from Guru to the present day.
After the show closed, Lif didn’t abandon the crowd to retire to the safety of his dressing room, but remained to chat with the audience and sign autographs.
One thing that is striking about Lif is the fact that his appearance and mannerisms don’t fit the preconceived notion of a rapper. He is short, wears glasses and has thick nappy dreads. But he just happens to be one of the leaders of the new underground hip-hop scene in Boston.
Born and raised in Brighton, Lif credits his parents and the city itself for much of his success. “They always were good about providing me with places where I could be and not have to worry about senseless violence, and the city has just simply been like a library to me, I could go out to places and just dream,” he said.
He cites old-school hip-hop as his main musical influence. “I love that old school sound with some soul in it,” he said. He constantly spoke about keeping it funky and fresh. “We want to back to the old school; it’s all about the old school,” he added.
Lif got his opportunity to bring it back thanks in part to local label Brick Record’s founder Papa D. “Papa D had a studio where you could record a track for cheap or even free,” recalls Lif about the early days at D’s. “A lot of underground cats got their start thanks to Papa D,” he said.
The rapper hooked up with his long time collaborator Fakts One at D’s studio. Fakts One described their initial meeting. “We met at that apartment just playing video games and hooked up.”
Fakts and Lif credit Papa D’s as the start of the current scene in Boston “Pretty much that spot established the current hiphop scene in Boston,” Fakts said, with Lif chiming in, “I wouldn’t have met Akrobatic without that house.”
Politics and current affairs are a main theme of Lif’s rhymes and he used the incidents of Sept. 11 as inspiration for his “Emergency Rations” EP coming out in June. “It’s a record inspired by the incidents of Sept. 11, but mainly the government’s reaction to it and the media’s actions since then,” said Lif. “The government’s introduction of anthrax is what really put me over the edge.”
Lif is a very intelligent MC and sees the fall 2002 release of his debut album tentatively entitled, “I Phantom” as an opportunity to educate the public. “My music is a voice for the voiceless. The people this country was founded on and have been ignored.”
Lif’s even-paced flow is somewhat reminiscent of Snoop Dogg’s in its flawless delivery. But instead of wasting his talent rhyming about drugs and women, Lif uses his abilities to educate listeners and do something to effect change. It’s this combination of talent and smarts that will continue to draw crowds.
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