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The Bacchanal Concert on the Steps is coming up next Saturday, April 21st…which means it’s time for someone to spoil the surprise so everyone can get down to bitching. Following the likes of Kanye, De La Soul, and Common: this year’s performers are Blackalicious and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien.
Who?
OK, both are established, relatively successful hip-hop acts from California. Blackalicious has 60 Columbia fans on Facebook, and their last album peaked at #79 on the R+B/Hip-Hop charts. Del was all over “Clint Eastwood” by the Gorillaz, and is Ice Cube’s cousin. Our question to readers:
{{poll “9”}}
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57 Comments
@suckit let’s get fuckin’ Mos Def over here. the problem with columbia concerts is their fuckin’ cheap.
everyone would rather have one ill band/artist rather than two semi-decent ones.
@seven layer cake don’t hate; blackalicious and del are fuckin illmatic. very excited for the show!
@bay area Del is soooo real! i’m hella pumped for this shit! you guys should look into him, cause he is one of my favorites of all time…from oakland baby!
@Biggie Smalls Del is old school
@zomg bring back hendrix from the dead! i bet harvard could do it for their students. blahblahblah whinewhinewhine poutpoutpout
@weather man the past two years it’s rained on the concert, which made attending bothersome. Bus Driver was horrible in 2005. Ghostface was pretty cool last year.
Next year, can we aim higher and pull 50 Cent? He’s from the city (won’t have to pay for a hotel!), and what’s he been lately anyway?
@??? Fitty lives in Farmington CT, last I checked. Don’t let him fool ya.
@spec music had something to do with the decision, i believe.
@The Dink It’s not that Blackalicious isn’t good…just not exciting enough an act for the spring show. Ghostface, Kanye, Outkast are major rap artists who put on great shows. Blackalicious? Simply not the same level. Del will be cool, I’m excited for him, but he’s not the headliner. The headliner should be bigger and better than Blackalicious, who quite frankly just doesn’t stand out enough. Talib, Mos, Nas, etc. are all viable options that SHOULD be playing.
@blackalicious blackalicous is awesome. did a set at the big langerado music festival over spring break down in florida and it was really cool.
@No Big Draws From what I’ve read in the past, even before the monetary issue (Kanyeezy isn’t coming ’round for $50K, but Iona College did get Lupe Fiasco this year…) comes the security question. CU Security asks them to keep the act a secret so that campus doesn’t get flooded with fans of that act from outside of the Columbia community, since the gates remain open. Even if CUConcerts could save up six figures, security concerns would probably prevent them from ever having any artist well-established enough to play venues larger than, say, Hammerstein Ballroom. But hey, you want a popular rock act? The Fratellis are playing Irving Plaza on the 26th.
@whoever said that we should expect blackalicious to be the next big thing is kidding themselves. they’ve already had their breakthrough opportunity, and they’re just not going to get much bigger than they already are.
@also columbia concerts does try to balance things between rock and hip-hop. in the fall, a rock band plays the weekend everybody’s moving in (the Hold Steady this year, Yo La Tengo last year, the Walkmen the year before) and a hip-hop act plays bacchanal in the spring (Blackalicious, Ghostface, Common, etc). of course, bachannal is the bigger event because everyone is here and there’s actually time to promote it.
@the reason that it’s always a hip-hop act is that at this point, POP = HIP-HOP. hip-hop is THE popular music these days, the way jazz was in the swing era and rock ‘n roll was during the british invasion. whether you like it or not, rock music these days is niche music. bacchanal is supposed to be a crowd-pleaser, and almost any rock band they could book would alienate as many people as it would attract. the problem is that columbia concerts doesn’t actually have enough money to book a hip-hop act that’s REALLY big–if T.I. was playing, that would be sort of thing that would draw everybody out for the show.
@... who HASN’T heard of blackalicious? columbia is way to fucking white bread.
@what? white kids are the only ones who listen to blackalicious so your point carries no weight.
@DHI But Gift of Gab carries much weight.
@THE TRUTH ROCK MUSIC IS DEAD YOU IDIOTS. on that note, who the fuck came up with blackalicious? he wasn’t even in Lost…
@its because hip hop acts are cheap to hire. Rap generally sucks live because only a few rappers can actually reproduce anything close to what they do in the studio in a live performance. Em, Snoop, Wu Tang, and a few others can pull it off but most can’t. Thus since they generally suck live and only require the backing of someone at the turn tables/mixing board the price is lower. But seriously I would prefer that we just have a spring concert every other year if it meant that we could have enough money to get a real band here. I mean jesus fucking christ we could surely get the New York Dolls or someone as good and not mainstream-huge to come out.
@seriously though the hip op acts books for the spring are usually high quality. i like hip hop. i’ll probably enjoy the concert this spring like i have in the past. but it really doesn’t have to always be a hip hop act.
im curious to know who was actually responsible for picking, what kind of budget they’re working with and their rationale for choosing the acts they do. if they are choosing hip hop acts because lesser known hip hop acts are probably the best value on a limited budget, there’s probably not much one can do about that. but if they’re picking hip hop acts thinking it’s what the majority of students want, then i think there should be a poll each year. at the least, a little variety never killed anyone.
@mommy, look! google! “im curious to know who was actually responsible for picking, what kind of budget they’re working with and their rationale for choosing the acts they do.”
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/be/members.htm
@Not true CUConcerts chooses the artist, Bacchanal pays for it.
@fuck you man for trying to be rational.
@Dirty Projectors? More like shitty projectors.
@you shut your face!
@Come on guys Why the hell do we always have hip hop acts? Is it because Columbia wants to make the Harlem community feel welcome on campus? Would it kill them to bring a rock group to campus for once so we could actually have a concert? I just can’t imagine thousands of students turning out for these guys, however talented they may be.
@Hmmm …hip hop…again? My god…bring back Ben Folds..please, for the love of god.
@fuck ben folds he went downhill after ditching ben folds five, of course.
@eww no for the love of god don’t.
@deeply saddened I WANTED CLIPSE.
@fuck Keith Hernandez outkast was hot in 96, after ATLiens.
dumbass
@asdf yes. yes.
@P Willy does anyone here know anything about music other than “you hold on”? who gives a fuck about the genre, just get us someone who’s remotely relevant. nobody liked blackalicious 10 years, and i’m pretty sure nobody likes them now. and del, like sure kinda funny but like what the fuck nobody wants him coming on a saturday afternoon. and just to whoever made this statement — “Outkast was hot in 03-04, after the concert on the campus.” — you shouldn’t say something about something you know nothing about you lame ass fuck. motherfuckers
@Wyclef Jean your polls mean nothing to me
@How about the band that was playing at Low Plaza last night? Anything but mediocre hip-hop…
@HOLD ON ONE SECOND Before you all Bitch and Moan AGAIN- Columbia Concerts has had a record of bringing artists onto campus just BEFORE they make it big. Outkast was hot in 03-04, after the concert on the campus. Ditto Kanye, who got the “who???” treatment when he was annnounced except by those in the know. The next year Kanye was BIG.
So just enjoy the show, because you’ll be able to say you were ahead of the curve when the performers are the enxt big thing next year.
@you hold on no one ever said “who?” to outkast. and that was kanye a month after his debut album. blackaligious and del have been around since the early 90’s. if they’re the next big thing, then there is no god.
@blackalicious is really good – even if you’re not a hip-hop person seriously check them out.
@ummm.... the umlaut goes over the u.
see.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6tley_Cr%C3%BCe
@ROCK AND ROLL!!! Mötley Cruë!!
Mötley Cruë!!
Mötley Cruë!!
Mötley Cruë!!
Mötley Cruë!!
Bring Mötley Cruë!!
@Dude, this is sweet Yes, yes it is sweet.
Also, lol @ #10.
@s w del is extremely tight, though his live show is hit or miss.
i saw him play one time and he claimed to be sick, so he just stood on the corner of the stage facing away from the audience and playing with a huge wooden cane
@shira I’m excited. I saw Del something like 6 years ago, and it’ll be awesome to see him again. Good job, Columbia Concerts folks.
@alum 03 and 06 I never understood the preoccupation with hip hop for our major music events.
btw, the human verification test is biased against the color blind.
@Honestly, BAND Are they serious? 4 fucking years, not a single goddamned band. Could we do a poll and figure out, shit, most people listen to rock/punk/alternative, which usually consists of a band. No fuckin’ bands come? Seriously? All hip-hop, all the time?
@are you kidding me? yo la tengo and dirty projectors played last year, and spinto band and hold steady this year. not to mention all the bands WBAR puts on every few weeks! grow a pair
@for real? Wait, did Yo La Tengo play Bacchanal last year? How did I miss that? Excited to see Del – big step up from Northern State that one year.
@WBAR you could always come to the WBAR-B-QUE this sunday
it got a great write up: http://www.ohmyrockness.com/Venues.cfm
@jay Del was also involved in Handsome Boy Modeling School, Hieroglyphics, and Deltron 3030, among others, and that stuff is all over movie and video game soundtracks; you’ve probably heard a lot of his material and just don’t realize it was him.
Blackalicious, though… weren’t they just here a couple of years ago?
@that was Dilated Peoples you’re thinking of (I think). NSOP ’03. Same boring ass DJ/MC combo, easy mistake.
@How How many of those 60 people in the fan club are also the board that picks who comes…
I wish one year we actually had a band. You know, with some instruments?
@Preempt Let me just say before the closeminded fucks get on this thread that these are some of the two best and most unique hip hop artists around. I don’t even like hip hop that much and I am excited. Do yourself a favor and go check them out instead of complaining.
@how can you tell what hip hop artists are the best and most unique if you don’t like hip hop much?
@yeah poll needs to be re-worked, please. del is amazing!
@I wrote the poll mutherfucker. you are amazing!
@who the fuck wrote that poll?
god.
@poll-taker you can’t see the question after you’ve filled out the poll….