WTF: GZA backed by Black Lips for a second at SXSW
GZA is a phenomenal rapper, and principal member of the popular rap group Wu-Tang Clan. The Black Lips are a fairly good neo-blues indie rock band from Atlanta, GA. How the two came together for a performance at this year’s South by Southwest is beyond me, but it happened last Friday. Yes, these things apparently happen places other than a N.A.S.A album.
The fact that GZA and the Black Lips did get together is certainly enough to raise some eyebrows, but even stranger is how much of a fail it appears to have been. Sadly, GZA seems to stumble through classics such as the Liquid Swords gems “Duel of the Iron Mic” and “Living in the World Today” or ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”. It’s hard to tell what’s going on as the band seems to stop playing at times, though the pair-up actually sounds somewhat decent at others. Why this occurred seems to be confusing, but at least it provides us with some speculation and a little entertainment:
“Duel of the Iron Mic”
“Shimmy Shimmy Ya”
In an Ideal world this would have been a humungous success. Sadly, the world is pretty imperfect and the effect was simply confusing. It’s worth a watch, however, and probably would have been cool live.
i’d be interested in seeing how the show from the night before went. maybe my love for wu is blinding, but this show didn’t seem all that bad to me (for free). i guess i was expecting a typical rap show clip with the music sounding nothing like it does on the album, and unintelligible yelling into microphones.
instead, yeah…there was the stumbling of the lyrics, but i didn’t think it went that bad. hey man, it is freakin’ hot in Texas on the first day of spring…i’m sure they were tired and don’t rehearse…cut em some slack! i heard they are going to collaborate in the studio. not sure if that is true, but i certainly imagine it would be a lot more polished than this free show.
on another note, my favorite Wu member was ODB, and i was happy to see him represented. 3 of the 5 songs have ODB in the studio versions.
anywho, to each their own
This is was terrible, as much as I wanted to check out The Black Lips I had to leave after 2 songs - that’s how awful it was.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
[...] Black Lips and GZA got together for an onstage collaboration of Wu-Tang and ODB favorites. While the result didn’t impress our Drew Litowitz all too much, the two acts seemed to think it went well, as evident by a recently released EP featuring some [...]