what can we get for ten dolla? ANYTING WE WANT!!!

Pictures from the M.I.A./Diplo show last night:



(i think you can see Chris and Nirav, the guys i met up with, in this one, towards the bottom right)
(Diplo on the dexxxxx)


so yeah. i got to the knitting factory early and met up with some peeps from IHM and headed into the main area. Nick Catchdubs hit the decks first. it was pretty much a straightforward hip hop set, but it was pretty good. after that Diplo took the decks for the next few hours (for both his and M.I.A.'s sets) and he was just unbelievable. along with the hip-hop, he threw in everything from dancehall to reggateon to baile funk (Brazillian ghetto booty music... i bought a copy of his "Favela On Blast" mix before the show, and it's incredibly sick and awesome) to Baltimore club (i neeeeeeeeed more fucking Baltimore shit, it's the sickest shit ever) to all sorts of other shit. at one point he segued The Cure into Snoop Dogg, and it all worked somehow. this blending of styles is pretty much an accurate description of M.I.A.'s sound as well. listening to "Favela On Blast", it basically sounds as if some songs on M.I.A.'s album are just her singing over tracks built from samples of this stuff.

anyway. M.I.A. played 2 sets, and they were good, but i think her voice isn't really that strong (yet) and her live show kind of demonstrates this. her dance moves seemed sort of calculated. she did seem really nice, though, and as if she was having a good time, but she did seem kind of nervous. but whatever, the crowd was into it anyway. but it wasn't as insane as i was hoping it would be..... this was a show in new york that sold out weeks in advance, for an artist whose proper album isn't even out yet. i assumed that everyone in the crowd already either downloaded Arular or had a promo copy of it. but then again, this is new york, where going to any show will inevitably find you in the company of scads of jaded hipsters who think they're too cool to act as if they're enjoying themselves in any way. the only time during the show when things got really insane was during the climax of "Galang" when EVERYONE was screaming and jumping along. i was hoping the majority of the show would be like that. but hey, it was a fun show. she only played like 10 songs or so, not even every song on her album, but about half the songs, Diplo played the beats from both the album version and the Piracy Funds Terrorism version... and she did play the PFT version of "URAQT", which isn't on the album probably because the PFT version is way better, and that samples a really amazing Baltimore club track that they probably couldn't get a sample cleared of (plus i dont think it'd really fit on the album anyway). altho Nirav said that Jive is planning to release PFT and that they cleared most of the samples (not the LL Cool J one).

so anyway, fun show, it was definitely nice to be in a show at the Knitting Factory where most of the people actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. Diplo is certainly one of the best DJs i've seen in a while. even tho i think M.I.A. needs to work on her live act, she's still incredible, and Arular is pretty much guaranteed to be high up on my album of the year list for 2005.

ROCK!
-paul