A friend of mine, prior to Brother Ali’s concert at the Knitting Factory on Thursday night, explained it like this – “Every time I leave a Brother Ali show, I feel the way I think I’m supposed to feel when I leave church. I’m just so happy that everyone is alive and pumped about the world.”
If Ali is - as he is often called by fans - a “street preacher,” then Thursday night he was preaching to the choir. The sold out Knitting Factory crowd seemed to know every lyric, from hit singles to deeper EP cuts from years ago. Even those who didn’t know the words wore broad smiles on their faces; I would challenge any casual rap fan to not have a good time at a Brother Ali show.
For openers, recent Rhymesayers signees Grieves and Budo were a pleasant surprise in the number one slot. They were followed by a short and furious surprise set from Immortal Technique protégé Diabolic and a longer opener from blog-favorite Fashawn that fell a little flat. Before too long, it was time for the main event.
Brother Ali stayed toward the more mainstream of his repertoire, with songs like “Forest Whitaker,” “Walking Away,” and “Us” getting the largest fan response. Throughout the crowd, though, lips moved in time with the lyrics of deeper cuts like “Good Lord” from the Truth Is Here EP and “Blah Blah Blah” from Shadows on the Sun. My personal favorite, “Room With A View,” was spot on.
Throughout the entire show, it felt like the crowd was witness to the latest step in Brother Ali’s transformation as an artist. “Every article that is ever written about me,” he said, “starts with the same sentence. It’s like they cut and pasted it – ‘Brother Ali is a fat, albino, Muslim rapper from Minnesota.’” The crowd laughed approvingly, as if acknowledging the short-sightedness of that statement. In truth Brother Ali is just now, for the first time, at a position in his career where his work is more important than that statement. His unique story got his foot in the door, and by recording and grinding on tour, he has forced his entire body across that threshold.
After finishing his set, Ali came back out for an encore. He brought legendary underground emcee Immortal Technique onto the stage – along with Technique’s boy Poison Pen – and freestyled over beats concocted by Ali’s excellent DJ BK-One. Brother Ali has never been known for his freestyling, but with Technique he put a great finish on the night, going after the beat with an easy energy that encapsulated the show’s feeling.
I won’t pretend to know Ali on anything other than a musical level – I’ve been to a couple of his shows and I interviewed him once – but he just seemed happier on Thursday night. He’s slimmer than he was on last year’s tour with Atmosphere, and sporting a goofy Amish beard. He smiles all the time, even more than usual. It’s been a good couple years for Brother Ali, a fact that was accentuated when he gave an oral history of his album releases on stage with fans filling in the blanks. “First I came out with that demo tape called…” he called, to which the audience responded enthusiastically, “Rites of Passage!” He went on and on through his discography before finishing with his latest. “Then this past year I found out there’s no you, and no me, there’s just…”
“Us!”
“I said there’s no you, and no me, there’s just…”
“Us!”
There’s no you, and no me, there’s just…
Us.
It sure felt that way.
