With shirts off, dancing and sweating, their performance felt intimate and their sound, immense. With the formality stripped away, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble just let it all out. Most of the people present gladly took them up on this offer, to the chagrin and bewilderment of the theater’s ushers. After finishing the first song, the band pleaded with the audience to come dance in the large open section right in front of the stage. The energy and passion displayed by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble had turned the large, impersonal Lütfi Kırdar auditorium into a giant party. Was this disappointing? Actually, no, not at all.
It seemed as if their names were used as bait to get people in the door, when in fact they very much played a supporting role. MF Doom came on stage for one song, while Mos Def, despite being on stage for much longer, seemed to consider his presence to be enough to satiate his fans. Yet both of their performances were lacking. For any fans of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, his album with Danger Mouse entitled The Mouse and the Mask will be sure to tickle your fancy. Likewise, MF Doom is an inventive lyricist who makes clever songs that are sprinkled with his own brand of dark humor. Mos Def, who now goes by the name Yasiin Bey, has an amazing repertoire and even samples one of my favorite Turkish singers, Seda Bağcan, in his song “ Supermagic “. In fact, if Hypnotic Brass Ensemble hadn’t been so stellar, I would have considered the evening a wash. Initially lured to the concert by the promise of Mos Def and MF Doom taking the stage, I gave little thought to their background music. Yet within the first few minutes of their performance, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble stomped this stereotype to pieces and left it broken on the stage, beyond any hope of repair. The thought of a brass ensemble generally conjures up, at least for me, an image of stuffy older men ensconced in the venerable world of classical music. Classic was aided and abetted by none other than the legendary Madlib, and for my money (and hopefully yours), the material edges close enough to its title to earn more than grudging respect.Saturday night belonged to the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Medaphoar will never be major and your mom will never know his name, but the Stones Throw MC puts in the work and he does it with real skill. Suum clique pulchrum est maybe, but I question the allegiance of any hip-hop fan who can’t find something of value here. Somehow along the way it became cool for white journalists to dismiss hip-hop traditionalists, but in 10 years I’m still gonna be listening to this shit and blog monsters will forget they ever pretended to find “Fancy” amusing. It’s true: there’s nothing surprising or cutting-edge about this record, but in an era where Iggy Azalea and Meghan Trainor are afforded commercial and sometimes even critical cred for high-flash cultural appropriation, the M.E.D.s of the world matter all the more. “the rap equivalent of a middle-relief pitcher asked to go eight innings,” and while I get the sentiment I think it underestimates both the artist and the hunger fans feel for music like his. Pitchfork opened their review by calling M.E.D.