GZA played Brighton Music Hall – 6/14
From the get-go, there was something a little bit off about last week’s appearance by Wu-Tang Clan legend GZA at Brighton. The tour was announced just weeks before it happened and didn’t appear to be supporting anything in particular. Indeed, the Brooklyn rapper born Gary Grice hasn’t released a project of his own since 2008, and the long-teased Dark Matter still looms somewhere distant on the horizon. And yet, on a Tuesday night in Allston, here he was.
The last time I encountered GZA in town was a much different scene, at a Harvard auditorium on a later November day in 2011 where he delivered a lecture on songwriting and science. About a year later, I missed the GZA tour I’d always wanted to see, which involved his 1995 classic LP Liquid Swords, a live band that for some reason included Wavves’ Nathan Williams, and opener Killer Mike. I saw The Walkmen that night instead, which I don’t necessarily regret given that The Walkmen are great and have since broken up, but that was assuredly the ultimate tour on which to see GZA in the 2010s.
Last Tuesday night was not that. There was no band, no frills, and no real sense that anything had been planned very far in advance.
In a transgression of traditional rap show code, things kicked off relatively on-schedule with an opening set from former Das Racist member Heems. There’s certainly a potential for the Queens MC’s oddball tendencies to scan a little strangely for a more old-school-minded audience, but Heems was up to the task of keeping things unpredictably loopy and entertaining even when the crowd wasn’t totally buying in. I would guess he gained a few converts by the end of the night though. In between the self-deprecating jokes and swinging his mic toward the monitors for a feedback screech in the service of “punk rock,” he fired off plenty of head-spinning verses.
The room was packed by the time GZA and entourage took the stage – a bit of a surprise given the show’s under-promoted nature, and it being a Tuesday. Still, there was something lacking in the energy of it all. GZA came out of the gate with a string of Liquid Swords bangers, but he wasn’t quite finding a groove on the mic. DJ missteps that resulted in half a song being replayed and others cutting off early didn’t help.
Things did improve as the night proceeded though. Mixing issues were smoothed out, and GZA himself seemed to warm up after a few songs. The setlist touched on the majority of Liquid Swords, along with all of the relevant and essential Wu-Tang group cuts. And whether GZA himself nailed every verse was kind of beside the point. These songs are long since embedded in the heads of every hardcore fan, and it’s pretty difficult to have a bad time with a room full of people gleefully rapping “Clan in da Front.”
After less than an hour it was all over and done with, and the question of why exactly GZA was here at all still lingered. But there are some things only the Genius may know.
