Lil Keke's Birthday Bash House of Blues March 30, 2011
9:51 p.m.: Got the tickets. Waiting outside to meet a guy that was supposed to be here 30 minutes ago. There's a white guy here dressed like he had auditioned for Reservoir Dogs and didn't get a part and never fully recovered. Neat. This is going to be a fun night.
9:58: Killa Kyleon just walked up. That guy knows everyone. Pay attention to him the next time you see him work a room. It's pretty remarkable, if only because the exchange is almost always exactly the same every time. He says, "What's good? You good, my nigga?"
Then the other person says whatever, then Killa immediately responds with something specifically crafty (usually a metaphor of some sort) that only someone as supernaturally cool as Killa could have come up with instantaneously. I hate my life.
10:02: Oh, a guy is carrying what may be his girlfriend out of House of Blues. She's either really drunk or really dead. Cool, cool.
10:16: Finally walking in. It's fairly packed in here. Excellent. We were worried how a Wednesday-evening show would fare. H-Kane is serving as the host tonight, with cohort GO DJ J-Boss DJing it up. Those two guys host all of the shows all of the time. We heard they were hosting a funeral earlier this evening. That shit was probably super-hype.
10:24: The lineup tonight is pretty tough: Pokey, Flip, J-Dawg, Ro, ESG, Slim, Bun, 'Ke. Curious to see how this plays out tonight. It will either go one of two ways: 1) Everyone will come out individually, perform a few of their more famous tracks, sprinkling in a couple of songs that they think should have been better received than they were, making it like several tiny concerts; or 2) They'll all come out at once and do one mega-concert. If it's the latter, we'll be out of here by 11:30. If it's the former, we'll be here 'til goddamn Friday afternoon.
10:34: Don 'Ke! Cool. A 400-word summation of the Keke Conundrum:
"Lil' Keke has been underrated for his entire career. Even when "Southside" made him a regional superhero back in 1997-98, it was the wrong type of fame. "Southside" managed to be both conventional (neighborhood-specific shout outs, car talk, etc.) and unconventional (minimal trunk rattling capabilities, high-pitched piano work) at the same time. It was incredibly instinctive.
You didn't want to dance when it came on; you had to dance. And it caught fire so fast that a lot of people who didn't normally listen to "that" type of music were listening to it. So when the immediate charm of it wore off (before it settled into the "this song should be universally respected and recognized as a watershed moment in Houston rap" category a few years later), those people seemed to automatically disregard the rest of the album. That's the wrong type of fame.
At any rate, Keke is not underrated in the same sense that someone like AZ or Masta Ace is underrated. His lyricism, delivery and general production have been rated justly for the duration of his career. He's pretty good at all most of the time, stellar at one or two occasionally, and off the charts with all three every so often (this happened again with 2007's "I'm A G"). If you put some numbers to it, he'd almost certainly have a higher Good Song to Bad Song percentage rate than a lot of artists that are heavy on the radio now.
But he's very John Everyman in his essence. His flow doesn't rumble under your feet like Z-Ro's, or rat-a-tat at your eardrum like Bun B's; it sits right in the middle, which is where a lot of unimportant rappers fall, so he's lumped in with them. However, Keke manages to sustain a feeling of importance despite this, which makes him subtly imposing, and that might be more impressive than being overtly imposing.
Remember Eddie Johnson from those late '90s Rockets teams? He played 17 seasons in the NBA, was No. 22 on the All-time NBA Scorers list at the time of his retirement, and had one of the best "I just ripped your heart out" moments in Rockets playoff history against the Jazz in 1997.
But Johnson wasn't terribly athletic, so when you watched him play you never got the feeling that he was doing anything you probably couldn't do yourself (until you actually got out there and tried to do it). And you can't lionize somebody that you don't think is more talented than you are. It's counterintuitive. That's how it is with Keke. That's why he's underrated."
Now you're all caught up.