OJ Da Juiceman Booed After Three-Song Set
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/oj-da-juiceman-booed-after-three-song-set/
It’s never a good idea to miss a show you’ve been scheduled to play, but somewhere in Georgia, the excellently named rapper
Waka Flocka Flame was probably breathing a sigh of relief in the small hours of Thursday morning.
Around that time, his compatriot
OJ Da Juiceman — both men are protégés of the Atlanta rap star Gucci Mane — was getting booed at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Midtown Manhattan. It didn’t take much to elicit the response: OJ’s set lasted three songs, not even ten minutes. Somewhere down south, he probably would have been paid several thousand dollars for the exact same performance.
But here, for a CMJ-heavy crowd of purists, it wasn’t enough. The showcase was sponsored by the prominent hip-hop blogs
NahRight.com and
OnSmash.com, which have emerged as crucial avenues for new talent. But
on a bill that also featured the New York eminences grises Raekwon, Styles P and Jadakiss, OJ barely stood a chance. CMJ purports to be about the thrill of discovery, but is often just a reinforcement of received values. The hip-hop internet can be guilty of the same thing, creating a class of listeners who are purportedly open-minded but are actually forming taste free of any physical context, and defending it at any cost.
Even by denying hits, it turns out. OJ’s “Make Tha Trap Say Aye” successfully broke through to New York radio, but maybe not to the New York internet. Would the mood of the room have shifted if Cam’ron, who appeared on that song’s remix and is something of a godhead figure to purists, had made a surprise appearance? We’ll never know.
Given OJ’s reception, Waka Flocka Flame probably would have had it even worse. But he most likely wasn’t sleeping too easy — he reportedly had to be up early Thursday morning for a court date.