5 Reasons Why The Cannibal Ox Reunion Show was a Disappointment

Last month, Cannibal Ox confirmed that they'd finally be following up 2001's The Cold Vein, an album widely regarded as an underground hip-hop classic. The reunion show went down last night at The Knitting Factory in New York City, and we went into it with a mixture of uncertainty and excitement. We left with one thing: disappointment. As much as it pains us to say, the Cannibal Ox reunion show was one of the worst concerts we've been to this year.

By Jon Tanners and Confusion

The Cold Vein is one of independent hip-hop's seminal releases, regardless of era, region, or subgenre. Of course, its excellence is born, in part, of all three, defining a particular strain of forward-thinking New York hardcore, speaking to the possibilities of respecting old school influence while pushing it in new direction.

With El-P's cinematic production in tow, Vast Aire and Vordul painted a bleak, inventive portrait of millennial New York City, a place simultaneously paranoid and hopeful. The album holds up because, to this day, very little sounds quite like it, even in the catalogs of its respective creators.

With such a widely lauded album as the duo's only recorded statement and a decade in between its release and last night's show, expectations ballooned to perhaps unreasonable heights.

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Concerts in general aren't known for tight scheduling or punctuality, in particular. Last night's show pushed the boundaries of fashionable lateness. Though the show began at 9pm, a bevy of undercard rappers, an all-too-talkative emcee, occasional delays between performances, and sets that ran long, pushed Cannibal Ox back to 1am. By that point, segments of the crowd were notably restless and some audience members simply lost their patience and left. Though lateness is expected, a sloppy four hours has a way of deflating a much anticipated reunion show.

Look, we know that Vast Aire is excited about his Iron Galaxy crew. When we interviewed him last month, he told us he was working on an IGC album and that the clique would be in full effect. The problem? Most fans of Can Ox aren't familiar with these guys.

We all went to the show to see Cannibal Ox, and instead we stood through three hours of what played out like an open mic night. A swarm of rappers who would have fit nicely on an album of late '90s/early 2000s backpack rap (one DJ was actually wearing a backpack) took turns trying to pump up the mostly uninterested audience while a Nick Cannon-esque host offerred unwanted comedic relief between sets.

It might have been tolerable if the unknowns all disappeared once Can Ox took the stage, but that never happened. While Vast Aire and Vordul Mega teamed up to revisit some classic tracks, the flock of unknowns stayed on stage, throwing up their arms, striking b-boy poses, and rapping along like it was their time to shine.

Nothing against Vordul Mega and Vast Aire's solo material—that's besides the point. The point is that a Cannibal Ox reunion show is an inappropriate occasion to push solo material. Every person in that room would have been happy if the duo performed The Cold Vein from start to finish and nothing else. Every. Single. Person. Nobody in the room went to the show thinking, "Damn, I hope Vast digs deep into that solo catalog."

After one or two Cannibal Ox songs, Vordul Mega stepped to the side and Vast Aire performed solo with some random rapper. I would describe the song, but it was hard to hear over the heavy collective sigh of the audience.

Starting with the first act, the calls for "real hip-hop" and "bringin' it back" from the various rappers on stage came incessantly and ridiculously. When one of rapper Prop Anon said "yeah, I like swag rap," he sounded unfathomably out of touch with anything actually going on in rap. Those sentiments are certainly valid: There has been a lot of great music made under the banner of "real hip-hop" and there is a lot of terrible "swag rap." Out of the mouths of emcees who often sounded like they were battling against their own beats and imploring the audience to "party" along to the sort of hardcore beats you might expect from a Jedi Mind Tricks album, these sentiments felt empty and almost parodic.

Central to this particular problem was, regrettably, C Rayz Walz. He sang off key into the microphone. He consistently stopped rapping in the middle of songs. He spoke of "fucking the audience with this hip-hop dick." He repeatedly called songs back that no one seemed familiar with. At one point, angered that no one was rapping along, he walked over to his DJ and took control of the fader. He dipped out the volume every few bars in a demand for audience response. At one point during this painful exercise, he said, "Y'all 'sposed to be Def Jux fans?" A few moments later, he paused and a woman called out "I don't know this song!" And everyone laughed, because it was one of the night's most truthful moments.