I love rap music. In fact I wanted to be a rapper when I was younger and that desire actually got me into music production which is now one of the things I spend majority of my time doing. But as much as I love the genre I hate live rap shows because 9 times out of 10 they under-deliver and disappoint heavily. Following are 5 reasons why the vast majority of rap concerts suck.
1. Terrible Sound
Almost every rap concert I’ve been to has had terrible sound. Firstly, many rappers don’t bother to prepare even instrumental tracks to rap over. It has become the norm to just play back a studio recording of a song, with the vocals intact, and start rapping along to it. It’s a very lazy approach and generally provides an unpleasant listening experience. The performer usually has to shout over the backing track to be audible. If I’m paying to see a live show I want to hear a rapper’s vocals live not a CD. I can play a CD any time I want in the comfort of my home. Rock, jazz, afro beat, reggae, and other genres of music often provide way more exciting live shows because the live elements of the concert are not just passed over.
The best rap concerts I’ve been to are the ones which had live instrumentation. In some cases there wasn’t a complete band, just a drummer and an instrumental backing beat. But that alone makes a huge difference because with a live drummer you can feel the music more, it adds to the ambience of the room and the visual aspect of watching a drummer is exciting.
2. Poor stage design and General Lack of the Visual Element
Rap concerts often have little to no consideration of stage design. There’s normally no effort to put up projection, banners, appropriate lighting, and other props to create an ambience and environment so as to provide the audience with a visual feast. It’s not rare to see a stage full of hype men and or a statuesque group of men idly standing on stage behind the emcee. This in some people’s twisted minds is considered adequate ‘decoration’ for a show.
All in all there’s usually not much visual element to a show, which is ironic because people go to SEE a show, not necessarily hear it. The visuals do not complement the audio. In other concerts such as rock there’s not much need to stress this because there’s normally plenty happening on stage in the form of the musicians playing. Rap normally doesn’t have live musicians hence the level of activity on the stage is already very low and must be compensated for one way or another. Jumping on stage from one side to the other is normally not enough. Not to mention that jumping around the stage too much affects the vocal performance of the rapper and contributes to the poor audio mentioned earlier.
3. Poor Time-Keeping
It seems rappers think it’s cool to make fans wait, or maybe it’s just a general lack of discipline but it’s taking fans for granted. We pay to come and see you perform, our time is valuable. When a show starts late is takes away from the overall experience. Of course poor time management isn’t a problem that’s exclusive to rap. However, it seems to occur more in that genre than others from my experience.
4. Poor Musical Arrangement
Few rappers bother to arrange their music for the stage. Just because a song sounds good on record doesn’t mean it translates well to the stage. Songs often need to be tweaked to be effective on stage – a step that many rappers do not bother to take.
There are many more reasons but for me those are the main ones. I love the genre and as much as it has progressed on the technical and studio side very little progress has been made on the stage. Of course this isn’t the case with all rap shows. People such as Kanye West, The Roots, and Jay-Z are known for putting on thrilling live shows.
You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to create a good live show. You can make banners, backdrops, lighting, and other stage props using readily available and inexpensive materials. You can get plenty of tutorials on YouTube and all over the Internet so there’s no excuse for putting on a terrible live show.
