Review: R.A. The Rugged Man (@RAtheRuggedMan) Live @TheJazzCafe

R.A. The Rugged Man @ Jazz Café Review

[with AFRO & Eamon. Sup­port by Lock­smith & Stig of the Dump]

A Locksmith to the Rugged Man

Live Rugged Man, Live

R.A the Rugged Man’s notori­ety fore­shad­owed his music­al out­put for sev­er­al years; some­thing he does­n’t shy away on his record’s lyr­ics. Accounts of being banned from being in the same room as Aaliyah; defec­at­ing on stu­dio mix­ing boards, pimp­ing women for free beats and being black­balled by Def Jam records (as con­firmed by Meth­od Man recently) are all true.

Whilst launch­ing as a brash, offens­ive, ‘crustafied’, bel­li­ger­ent emcee, R.A’s pro­fes­sion­al tra­ject­ory has ascen­ded him to a pos­i­tion of a revered Hip-Hop schol­ar and cus­todi­an, who unlike many in the post-racial fal­la­cious Hip-Hop world, admits his pos­i­tion as a ‘white boy liv­ing off what Black people cre­ated.’ To this day R.A. pays dues to the art-form’s fore bear­ers with sev­er­al shout outs in his set to Rakim, Big Daddy Kane,Jungle Broth­ers, Kool Moe Dee, Schooly D, Wu Tang Clan and oth­ers.

There’s a heart-warm­ing recent story about a tal­en­ted 16 year old emcee named AFRO, who won a Rugged Man com­pet­i­tion in Septem­ber and then broke his ribs in a car acci­dent. R.A. Invited AFRO out to New York  in Octo­ber where he intro­duced AFRO to Hip-Hop legends such as Queen Lati­fah, Chuck D, Kool G Rap, Chip Fu, Sad­at X, Pete Rock, DJ Premi­er, Hav­oc and oth­ers. Sev­er­al of the afore­men­tioned have pledged col­lab­or­a­tions to AFRO’s début pro­ject and R.A the Rugged Man, so blown away by the young rap­per­’s skills, prom­ised him a Europe tour n Novem­ber. With AFRO was billed on the Jazz Café card, we learnt that R.A the Rugged Man keeps his prom­ises.

A Lock­smith

Under­card sup­port emcee Lock­smith amic­ably acquain­ted him­self to the audi­ence with a laid back Rich­mond, Cali­for­nia smi­ley swag­ger. All whilst hav­ing  author­ity to suc­cess­fully cur­tail noisy and drunk jab­ber­ers at the bar with a ‘Shut the fuck up’ before an acapella rhymed intro.

Lock­smith worked through a set includ­ing a 9^th Won­der col­lab­or­a­tion, laid back and funky DJ Quick-esq beats, and tra­vers­ing usu­al self-ref­er­en­tial Hip-Hop land­scapes of brow­beat­ing insin­cere emcees, call and responses and grow­ing-up tales. Whilst a chanted hook over the grimy sub bass of ‘Wil­lie Lynch’ proudly shouts ‘I don’t give a mother­fuck!’, it is evid­ent that Lock­smith clearly does. In an age where ‘hav­ing fucks left to give’ is going out of fash­ion quick­er than Nike Shocks/Jeggings/Rockports (pick one). Lock­smith’s ref­er­ences to his her­it­age (Black and Ira­ni­an), rites to pas­sage ern­esty and justice in Hip-Hop is caring and endear­ing.

It was set closer ‘Hard­est Song Ever’ that finally lif­ted the cur­tain to the human behind the dude rap­ping on stage. Intro­du­cing this as a ‘very per­son­al song’, Lock­smith spoke about being moles­ted as a child  in the com­pany of his babysit­ter.

‘The shit she would do to me, noth­ing else could undo

…she told me “strip down, no need to feel ashamed”
She brought anoth­er child, she said “let’s play a game”
My stom­ach’s in a twist, what you expect? Shit
I’m barely 5 or 6, I don’t know what sex is’

Amongst a male dom­in­ated audi­ence, it was spine chilling to hear Lock­smith recount his feel­ings of deal­ing with such trauma; doing-away with the fal­lacy of men refus­ing to  show vul­ner­ab­il­ity or sex-related insec­ur­ity.

‘I pushed away any woman I could con­nect with
That’s the shit you do when you deal with being moles­ted
…Am I scarred, am I flawed, am I gay then?
I’ve always loved women, that can­’t be the explan­a­tion’

In a cul­ture still dom­in­ated by mach­ismo and faux-hon­esty, as Lock­smith lapped up the audi­ence’s applause with an on-stage crowd selfie, it felt as if the night’s most remark­able moment may have already occurred.

Legends Nev­er Die

DJ Snuff expertly blen­ded 90s Hip-Hop to warm the audi­ence up for head­liner R.A the Rugged Man, who was intro­duced to rap­tur­ous applause by mono­lith Stig of the Dump.
Crowd in a frenzy, R.A the self-pro­fessed Cave­man and Black Nat Turn­er, trail blazed through new­er stom­pers (Defin­i­tion of a Rap Flow, The People’s Champ, Holla-Looh-Ya, Dan­ger­ous Three, favour­ites from pre­vi­ous album Die Rugged Man, Die and vis­it­ing 90s bench­marks (Every Record Label Sucks Dick, Cunt Renais­sance with Notori­ous B.I.G.)

Some reflect­ive moments  aside that paid rev­er­ence to Rugged Man’s fath­er (Uncom­mon Val­or: A Viet­nam story), this was not a show with sub­tlety – and that was abso­lutely fine. R.A the Rugged Man’s mas­tery of the mic is amongst the best in the craft; poun­cing around the stage like a deranged buf­falo-jag­uar hybrid whilst still main­tain­ing per­fect dic­tion nav­ig­at­ing dense, intric­ate flows with his head vibrat­ing like a tun­ing-fork. The folk­lore, the his­tory, the fame – noth­ing is rel­ev­ant when ulti­mately, all R.A the Rugged Man cares about is wow­ing the fuck out of an audi­ence with emcee­ing expert­ise to neck break­ing heavy beats.

It was won­der­ful to see the ment­or-protégé rela­tion­ship between R.A the Rugged Man and AFRO with the former encour­aging cues for call and responses, chor­uses, and hype man duties. AFRO’s solo moments were indeed awe­some: high­light­ing incred­ibly music­al cadence with breath­tak­ing flow not dis­sim­il­ar to the Big Pun and Free­style Fel­low­ships of the world. If AFRO refuses to believe the hype inev­it­ably bestowed upon him, he will mature into poten­tially one of the best live emcees ever. A sur­real nug­get of the night was the pres­ence  of Eamon (Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back), who per­formed his chart-top­ping hit (it was very enjoy­able) and stuck around for hype man and chor­us duties at times.

Legends Nev­er Die

R.A put on a smash­ing, rowdy, rauc­ous show to a boom­ing sound sys­tem with pup­pet­eer like dex­ter­ity for crowd dir­ec­tion. A strongly recom­men­ded exper­i­ence for no-frills Hip-Hop enter­tain­ment. But the magic of the night; the real­isa­tion of some­thing power­ful and rev­el­at­ory occurred earli­er with Lock­smith’s trans­par­ency and artist­ic vul­ner­ab­il­ity. It is true that some revolu­tions start from with­in.

by Perry Dom­in­oes       

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Wasif Sayyed

Author at I Am Hip-Hop Magazine

Wasif Sayyed’s many years as a writer, rap­per, pro­moter, ment­or and hip-hop pro­du­cer have shaped him into an enthu­si­ast­ic and insight­ful cul­tur­al cryp­to­graph­er. He loves read­ing and cook­ing, and can hear the whis­per of an unsheathed liquid sword from 50 paces. Twit­ter @WasifScion

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