The doors of Satellite Ballroom opened at 8:30pm and, 90 minutes later, my notebook was every bit as empty as my $3 Red Stripe. There were no signs of any performers taking the stage, but I could see them among a collection of high schoolers and one young man that resembled Garth from “Wayne’s World” and wore an undershirt that read “Word is Bond.”
A friend told me the gig reminded him of a high school dance, and the comparison hit home for a variety of reasons. The average age seemed to be 18, with a “feels like” of 16 years, and the clique mentality reigned supreme. Rap songs from the ’80s to recent songs by acts like M.I.A. played, and the kids in the crowd danced with a drive that couldn’t quite overcome self-consciousness.
 Why do rappers fall in love? GeT ripped through tracks from his latest lovelorn album during one of Satellite Ballroom’s final shows. |
Suddenly, everything happened. Lights dimmed then arose on a posse of five men, including Ari “Ghetti GeT” Berne, wearing a t-shirt bearing headshots of a dozen or so Marvel superheroes. His beats started at the click of a laptop—mostly old soul samples, sped up a la Kanye West—and the crowd pressed forward. By the second song, the swerving lead track “I, Get (Hi)” from his new album, A Full In Love, GeT commanded the audience; over a sample of “Why Can’t We Fall In Love?” by Tavares, 50 people or so chanted “Why not? Why not?” with the young emcee.
For the first six songs in Ghetti GeT’s setty set he cruised along, confident as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He pulled a pair of women onstage to dance, rhymed about high heels that “get asses up higher” and threw his superhero t-shirt into the crowd. He held his own for a while during a guest spot by Beetnix, his mentors, save for a song in which Damani Harrison tore into player-haters like a porterhouse steak, turning an a capella rhyme into an a capitation of lesser rappers. Ouch.
But by the second half of GeT’s set, capped by the bro-hymn “Top of the World,” the emcee largely slipped back to high school dance mode, stage-diving during a song and putting down a microphone for the first time all night to grind with a girl while his posse chanted at half-steam. Whether the mass of bodies onstage sapped his powers like kryptonite or he simply wore himself out during a ripping first half, GeT was replaced by mild-mannered Ari Berne by the set’s end, though not before proving his skills.
Endless Mic, a North Carolina-based rap trio from the Beastie Boys school of movement and the Harold & Kumar school of bong jokes, took the stage after another uncomfortably long wait. Despite their slacker appearance—a short fellow in an “Eric B for President” shirt, a slim-jeaned metalhead and a lazy-faced fellow that resembled Jim Belushi—Endless Mic hit the crowd at a manic pace, like a pack of speed freaks hopped up on espresso.
For anyone in the audience that doubted the lyrical richness of subjects like transsexuality (“I call her ‘call girl,’ boy/ ‘Cause she ain’t all girl”) or drug use (“I used to smoke dope./ I mean, I still do, but I used to also”), the Mic left them a pack of fiending believers. By their set’s end, the three fellows cued up whole tracks from the likes of Lil Wayne and Ratatat, set them spinning and got back to rhyming about weed smoke and Budweiser, seemingly reluctant to leave the stage and ready to do the whole set again, in reverse, if necessary.
When they left, however, another exhausting and unreasonably long set break took over. The time was 12:15am, nearly four hours after the Ballroom first opened, and Illville Crew’s set loomed ahead, but I was the only one lagging; the crowd scampered into the smoker’s alley beside Satellite and, reforming in their high school cliques, either lit up or sat down.
I stayed outside when the bass picked up, the crowds headed in and Quentin “Q*Black” Walker took over the microphone for the remainder of the evening, leading his Crew through a dozen or more numbers of his brand of lyrical and rhythmic camaraderie, equal parts Run DMC and Fugees. Inside the Satellite Ballroom was a crowd younger than any I’d seen at Satellite previously, kids that sang about things beyond their years to kids who aspired to be older. GeT was probably still in their midst, looking for his superhero t-shirt.
Like tonight’s gig, the Ballroom didn’t always get its timing right as a venue; it flitted back and forth between the juvenile and the superhuman. Shows started late, or started too late, and people stayed or left according to where they sat on the spectrum of patience, and mine was up for the evening, but I could walk away because Satellite still housed a group of attentive listeners and committed dancers, and the night was young to them. Certain that the Ballroom was in good hands for one of its final nights, I left.
