Monday night Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree brought their full cast of players to Neumos to rock a surprisingly packed vlub. The two-hour (!) set featured every main crewmember – rappers P.O.S., Dessa, Sims, Mike Mictlan and Cecil Otter as well as producers/DJs/beatmakers Paper Tiger and Lazerbeak – an ideal setup for the varied setlist of solo joints from their individual releases and more posse-oriented cuts from the two Doomtree collab albums.
Paper Tiger and Lazerbeak took the stage first, piecing together some beats using an impressive array of samplers, turntables and MPCs to whet the audience’s musical appetite. Lazerbeak even picked up a black Gibson SG to play three songs from his recent non-rap album Legend Recognize Legend with mixed results. The guy’s not a great singer and a fairly basic guitar player, but his knack for developing solid compositions that pair harsh drum knocks and fills with melodic, ambient leads made the more uncharacteristic stuff go down easy.
From there on out it was a full-fledged rap assault as the rest of the Doomtree crew came out, mics blazing, into the first stretch of collab tracks. Working the refreshingly receptive crowd into a hands-up, chorus-shouting frenzy in mere minutes, the Minnesotans fed off of each other while displaying their individual signature cadences, styles and lyrical content. Sims rocked a Miike Snow antlered-rabbit T-shirt while rattling off rapid verbal triplets, making the last word of each line pop with added emphasis. Mike Mictlan acted as the unofficial crew hypeman, jumping around and wildin’ the hell out while somehow maintaining command of the mic with his precise, on-point flow the entire way. Dessa slinked around the stage alternating between her rapping and singing duties, but sadly her mic seemed muffled and rendered it tough to pick up her quicker rap passages – the first sound problem of the evening. More on that later.
P.O.S. was the clear crowd favorite, the audience rapping along almost verbatim with his lyrics and answering his call-and-responses with booming replies. He was the first Doomtree member to get into some solo stuff, almost all of it from last year’s Never Better LP. Nearly every line of “Goodbye” was echoed by the crowd, and “Drumroll (We’re All Thirsty)” sounded fearsome with real people doing the chorus “Ohhhhhh-ohhhhh” screams. Almost more impressive was his refusal to hog any of the spotlight (despite being billed as the headliner, nonetheless), only getting through a couple tracks before handing the stagefront over for his partners to get into their own solo material. Sims, Dessa, Mictlan and Cecil Otter’s stuff wasn’t quite as impressive as P.O.S.’s but they received nothing but love from the audience and seemed almost surprised about it at times. Sims testified to the positive vibe in the building, declaring at one point, “Man, there’s like 400 of you here and it’s Monday and we’re not even from here!”
The vibe was such that not even a complete snafu could ruin the set. In what was without a doubt the most flagrant sound fuck-up I’ve witnessed at a venue like Neumos, Paper Tiger and Lazerbeak’s complex DJ/production setup completely lost power right as they were going into one of Sims’ tracks. Completely. All of the sound cut out, the beat stopped, and their gear powered off. Judging from the very audible shouts of “What the fuck?” and arms frozen mid-shrug from Doomtree and the look of panic on the face of the house soundpeople as they rushed over to remedy the situation, it was completely unexpected.
However, rather than letting the situation get awkward, Sims proceeded to recite his verse a cappella. The crowd went along with it, even providing a backing track of synchronized claps in place of a beat as the sound got fixed. Pretty soon the sound was back on, and a moment that could’ve blown the night for everyone ended up being one of the cooler parts of the show. Nicely done, everyone involved.
The ad-libbed performance – just a rapper reciting his lyrics with confidence and a pure delivery with no backing track – summed up the night pretty well. While Doomtree has been around for a while and aren’t necessarily advancing the rap game with their new stuff, they stick to the basics, the purest parts of what hip-hop is about, and do it damn well. They handle their own production, can all rap their asses off, know how to work a crowd and put on a high-energy show. And in the rap business, that’s all that really matters.
