Snoop Dogg, Mac Miller @ The Palace Theatre, Melbourne (22/01/2014)
Kicking off the night was twenty-two-year-old Mac Miller, who graced the Palace Theatre stage for the second time in two days. Twenty four hours before, the youngster was invited up multiple times to awkwardly dance amidst the light-and-nudity-drenched spectacle of an especially underwhelming and self-indulgent Major Lazer set. For folks who were there that disagree, build a time machine and go watch Diplo and his mates a year and a half ago at The HiFi Bar just before Free The Universe blew up. Witnessing their two-and-a -half hour, non-stop, ball-tearing venue-exploder will do you far better comparative insight as to how hard some artists stop trying once they earn a lot of cash than any nasty review I could concoct ever will.
Going in I very ignorantly knew exactly nothing of Mac Miller’s work. What I was assured of was that had very short purple hair, and considering his explicit lyrics and skin colour, I couldn’t help but make some “I didn’t know there was a purple Eminem!” (geddit?) jokes to myself while Miller bounced around the stage, but the dude was pretty entertaining. He tried hard to get the crowd pumped, and mostly succeeded. Though did ask a bit too much in the way of repetitive audience participation hand movements throughout the hour long set. Swigs of Jameson between songs seemed to impede the kid’s vocal ability, as he was nearly out of voice and breath by the time his last song came and went. Still, he got the job done delivering a decent enough command of Trap music, hip hop, and even a piano ballad he said was his “Elton John thing”. Kudos to the young talent for working hard to put on a good show, especially after his DJ dropped his intro less than fifteen seconds in to the start of his set.
After a wait between sets that appeared to last around eight hundred and seventy trillion years, Snoop’s DJ plodded on stage, promptly sparked up a big fat joint, and got stuck right in to the timeless party starter California by Dre and Tupac. Several other back up emcees and vocalists bounded on stage, as well as the live band. The place immediately lost its shit, and the characters on stage continued stirring up the hazy, weed-clouded room in to a veritable frenzy before Snoop casually sauntered on stage a chilled six minutes later.
Let me make this perfectly clear, Calvin Broadus is the single coolest mother fucker on the planet. Yes, I hear your cries of rational argument from a far. I agree that firemen, ambulance drivers, scientists who are trying to cure AIDS, and third-world volunteer doctors are cooler in the sense that they do indeed contribute more to the world being a better place every day. But Snoop Dogg is the coolest mother fucker on the planet. There is no level of italics that will do the man justice in print. All those wonderful life saving people I just mentioned would doubtlessly agree had they seen the show we at The Palace saw on Wednesday.
Languidly bobbing and rocking throughout his set in iconic fashion, but still full of energy when spitting the cavalcade of rhymes from originals and covers he seamlessly belted through in his hour-and-a-half on stage, Snoop absolutely laid waste to the place. Having a live band only heightened the sheer wonderfulness of the set. For a man just as famous for collaborations as he is for solo work, it’s great he has other guys on stage to play the part of the varied folks he’s joined up with in the past, ensuring he doesn’t have to miss killer tunes like Drop It Like It’s Hot.
A mid-set moment of silence to breezily spark up a joint, before some “Light, that shit, hit that shit, pass that shit” call-and-return from the crowd immediately saw the haze grow thicker in the already dense sticky-icky-icky air. It’s safe to say that there are absolutely no laws anywhere on the planet against smoking indoors or smoking weed as long as Snoop Diggity is around. Like I said, the coolest mother fucker on the planet.
I’d list every song he played, but it’d be useless because he played every rap song ever. You think I’m lying? Go to your iTunes and click any rap song. Go on. You hear that one? He played that. Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe, but you’ll never know because you should have been at this gig. House of Pain’s Jump Around, Snoop’s What’s My Name?, and a heartfelt musical mural to Tupac and Biggie were huge crowd highlights. As was his life-size mascot Nasty Dogg prancing about on stage with a huge blunt, and even huger flailing, body length prop penis.
Rounding out the night with a truly sincere thank you to the crowd for fighting to get him back in the country, followed elongated and positively wonderful whole-venue rendition of Snoop and nephew Wiz Khalifa’s Young, wild and free. It was awesome. Do yourself a gigantic favour and see Snoop live as soon as humanly possible.
Todd Gingell
Going in I very ignorantly knew exactly nothing of Mac Miller’s work. What I was assured of was that had very short purple hair, and considering his explicit lyrics and skin colour, I couldn’t help but make some “I didn’t know there was a purple Eminem!” (geddit?) jokes to myself while Miller bounced around the stage, but the dude was pretty entertaining. He tried hard to get the crowd pumped, and mostly succeeded. Though did ask a bit too much in the way of repetitive audience participation hand movements throughout the hour long set. Swigs of Jameson between songs seemed to impede the kid’s vocal ability, as he was nearly out of voice and breath by the time his last song came and went. Still, he got the job done delivering a decent enough command of Trap music, hip hop, and even a piano ballad he said was his “Elton John thing”. Kudos to the young talent for working hard to put on a good show, especially after his DJ dropped his intro less than fifteen seconds in to the start of his set.
After a wait between sets that appeared to last around eight hundred and seventy trillion years, Snoop’s DJ plodded on stage, promptly sparked up a big fat joint, and got stuck right in to the timeless party starter California by Dre and Tupac. Several other back up emcees and vocalists bounded on stage, as well as the live band. The place immediately lost its shit, and the characters on stage continued stirring up the hazy, weed-clouded room in to a veritable frenzy before Snoop casually sauntered on stage a chilled six minutes later.
Let me make this perfectly clear, Calvin Broadus is the single coolest mother fucker on the planet. Yes, I hear your cries of rational argument from a far. I agree that firemen, ambulance drivers, scientists who are trying to cure AIDS, and third-world volunteer doctors are cooler in the sense that they do indeed contribute more to the world being a better place every day. But Snoop Dogg is the coolest mother fucker on the planet. There is no level of italics that will do the man justice in print. All those wonderful life saving people I just mentioned would doubtlessly agree had they seen the show we at The Palace saw on Wednesday.
Languidly bobbing and rocking throughout his set in iconic fashion, but still full of energy when spitting the cavalcade of rhymes from originals and covers he seamlessly belted through in his hour-and-a-half on stage, Snoop absolutely laid waste to the place. Having a live band only heightened the sheer wonderfulness of the set. For a man just as famous for collaborations as he is for solo work, it’s great he has other guys on stage to play the part of the varied folks he’s joined up with in the past, ensuring he doesn’t have to miss killer tunes like Drop It Like It’s Hot.
A mid-set moment of silence to breezily spark up a joint, before some “Light, that shit, hit that shit, pass that shit” call-and-return from the crowd immediately saw the haze grow thicker in the already dense sticky-icky-icky air. It’s safe to say that there are absolutely no laws anywhere on the planet against smoking indoors or smoking weed as long as Snoop Diggity is around. Like I said, the coolest mother fucker on the planet.
I’d list every song he played, but it’d be useless because he played every rap song ever. You think I’m lying? Go to your iTunes and click any rap song. Go on. You hear that one? He played that. Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe, but you’ll never know because you should have been at this gig. House of Pain’s Jump Around, Snoop’s What’s My Name?, and a heartfelt musical mural to Tupac and Biggie were huge crowd highlights. As was his life-size mascot Nasty Dogg prancing about on stage with a huge blunt, and even huger flailing, body length prop penis.
Rounding out the night with a truly sincere thank you to the crowd for fighting to get him back in the country, followed elongated and positively wonderful whole-venue rendition of Snoop and nephew Wiz Khalifa’s Young, wild and free. It was awesome. Do yourself a gigantic favour and see Snoop live as soon as humanly possible.
Todd Gingell