Harold Stallworth is aging gracefully.
Last Friday evening, a dear friend was kind enough to offer me a spare ticket to a concert they were contracted to review. The Smoker’s Club Tour was hosted by The Fillmore, a 2,000-patron capacity theater located in downtown Silver Spring, Md., not far from my favorite cluster of record stores on Georgia Avenue. The Underachievers regurgitated Socrates’ philosophies. Ab Soul urged us to pry our third eyelids open. Joey Bada$$ invited his entire 11-man crew to freestyle over Wu-Tang instrumentals. Most of the performances were serviceable, I suppose. But it seemed like all the good ideas expressed onstage that night were rehashed from the 90’s.
The following afternoon, I came across Backyard Band’s repurposing of Nas’ “Hate Me Now” and Trick Daddy’s “Naan Nigga” at College Park’s CD Depot. Both performances were recorded during Big G’s Birthday Bash at D.C.’s now-defunct Club Icebox. Thankfully, the band invokes the spirit of their influences much more effectively than Bada$$ and company. There’s a thin line between true and trope; Backyard generally aligns with the former.
