Slum Village in Montreal

Photo Credit Thomas Bonamy-Cossard

The walls of the Cabaret UnderWorld venue scream and sweat Hip Hop, after bringing in many big names of the industry and underground, they’ve brought together a package of local, upcoming and notorious monikers, by which I mean of course, the well-known Slum Village. Mobtreal infiltrated the sound fortress, to capture every moment of the evening and share it to those of unfortunately missed the action.

You know you are in Montreal, when you make it early to a performance and the habs game is on a projector, the ice crusades are that serious here. Something which the first opening acts of the evening probably  forgot. Local rap group “Journey men” despite not making much of an impression in the room, mentioned the lost the team took hours ago, not only bringing the moral down but also rubbing the sports fans the wrong way. Yet, they provided a good effort to warm up the place for the following performers. A short break between sets, gave Dj Overflow the chance to establish supremacy on the decks, feeding the room sounds of the old school, as footage of “The First of the North Star” now illuminates the projector screen. Alee and Big Bricc, were the second of five opening acts to step on stage to boost the hype, and that is exactly what they did. The gifted duo quickly had everyone’s attention, keeping people in sync with the action and even had one girl in the crowd river dancing; yeah you, I saw that.

Photo Credit Anil Ramcharand

Have you ever seen an artist so live, so heated in the moment that the venue has to turn up the air conditioning ? If your answer is yes, then clearly you have seen Panther and Pomo live before. The Dynamic combo composed of Pomo on the synthesizer and Panther on the microphone, brings a fresh sound of unexpected music and backflips through perfectly timed vocals and flows of all genres. This agitated artist and his mate brought this evening’s experience to another plateau. By now the place is reaching maximum capacity and the crowd is getting eager to see the main event breach out of the green room. But first, another opening group. Performing for the first time in Montreal the “Action Figures” from Michigan, came to please the masses with a lot of excitement, unfortunately  the crowd didn’t seem too impressed with the amateur material brought to the plate. Finally, to close this evening’s musical hors d’oeuvres, UnderWorld brings you local rappers ST and Liam. The lyricism witnessed on their
set was one of a kind. The 2 Montreal emcees also released an Ep hours before the performance called “Inside the circle” and judging by the material shown on stage, is worth checking out.

Photo Credit Anil Ramcharand

 Hours after we had infiltrated the building, the time had finally come for long-awaited Slum Village to tear the house down. With no warning, they came on stage and attacked directly with some of their biggest records from the fantastic vol. 1 and 2. As live as they always were, they set the a Hip Hop trance with cuts and drops by Young RJ. You could have smelt the love in the air, or that might have been all the weed smoke, as the indoor burnt indoors. The room sang along to all the hits, which was not a treatment reserved to AZ a couple months back. After the music recollection and countless shout outs to the late J Dilla, they went on to show good continuity of business by unleashing some of their latest work. Slum Village, one of Detroit’s pride, well-known for their earlier work and collaborations, will release new material June 25th this year, on a project called “Evolution”.

So stay tuned for more!