Some see with the eyes/and some see with the hands/ I'm hoping you see with your ears and you'll understand/ the type of music you could frame up on your walls/this is the audio visual for all o' ya'll

-Mr. Live 

Have you ever been at rap concert where you are so impressed with a rapper that you left wanting to go out and actually buy (yes buy, not download)his music? Have you ever been so awed by an opening act that everything after them, including the headliner, bored you to sleep? Have you ever been so impressed with a live performance that you wanted to tape it and send it to Fifty Cent, Nelly, Kanye West (Yes, Kanye West! Did you see that concert at the Peterson?), and every other signed rapper with fifty hype men who are hoping they will get a record deal after five years of doing the rapper's job for them? Never? Really?! Well, then on November 18, you should have been in the Wiegand Gym watching Mr. Live perform. (For the record, there's no "Mr." in his name, just doing it for effect.) Let's digress.

We had all been deprived of a true hip-hop experience thanks to the same people who, according to Mr. Live, don't put enough marketing money in his music. These are also the people we have to thank for him "not having a video in circulation in ten years, since [his] first single," said J-Live. Those people should be shot. Why? Because as a result, hip-hop appeared to have been shot, stabbed, slaughtered, and destroyed. It seemed to have reached its flat line of monotony with one bad rapper after another, making excuses and soliciting praise for being obsessed with money, drugs, sex, or a combination of the three.

Then an alumnus of SUNY Albany, who earned his PhD in being an emcee, entered quietly, unassumingly, and with a great sense of humor, and gave one of the best concert performances the Carnegie Mellon campus has seen in the last three years. You can say that the mic is his defibrillator, and he is shocking the life back into hip-hop, one lyric at a time. 

With the attitude and intelligence of a guy who could easily be a Carnegie Mellon student, Mr. Live went from being the guy who personally got chairs for both of his interviewers to being the type of emcee with enough talent to go platinum and with enough positive and powerful content to change the world. But when was the last time you saw a video addressing the problems of Brooklyn's public school system in heavy rotation on MTV or BET? "Where would you find a song like that?" you ask. I'm sure Mr. Live would love to make a video for his song "Brooklyn Public."

At the concert, J-Live went through three-fourths of his set being more hype than his appointed hype man. You'd think that alone would be the highlight of this article. However, that was nothing compared to his performance of a song called "Bragging Writes." If people weren't paying attention to him before this song, they couldn't tear their eyes or ears away when it started. J-Live worked the turntables while rapping at the same time! And he wasn't just tapping the record and rapping; he was really scratching! J-Live would speed up the beat and slow the beat down, and his flow never suffered as a result. There were people in the crowd saying things like, "Wow, he can rap and he can dj!" and, "That's better than playing the piano and singing!"

His lyrical content was profound, which is what he said he was going for in his latest album Hear After. Specifically, J-Live said he wanted this album to be "not so technical as much as profound." That mission was accomplished without actually sacrificing so much on the technical side that his lyrical approach was no longer interesting. While he was performing on stage, every word he said could be understood, even when he sped up his raps. For those of you who have been to a live hip-hop concert, how many rappers have you heard live who confused you, even when you knew their songs, because they were screaming so hard you couldn't understand a word they were saying? (i.e. Talib Kweli. Oops, wait, wasn't he the headliner? I forget.) 

Speaking of Talib, something should be said about him. I mean, it was his concert.  Let's give him about as much time in the article as he gave us originality in his concert… crickets… Don't be mistaken, in his personal life and in his lyrical content, Kweli has touched on some serious issues, but his performance lacked personality. If you weren't a Kweli fan when you walked in, then you didn't walk out one. That's not because he doesn't have a message to send in his music, but because he didn't perform in a way that would have brought it across.

Talib Kweli, a man considered one of the most conscious, intelligent, and philanthropic rappers (as philanthropic as he can be with his salary) came to Carnegie Mellon, a school full of people who will change the world in their own individual ways, and what was the most memorable thing about his performance? Alex, I'll take "the break-dancers from Carnegie Mellon" for the ten dollars that I didn't have to pay for the concert. Talib didn't encourage us, remind us about the things going wrong in the world, or talk to us at all for that matter. He just sang all the new songs that he wanted us to hear and the old songs that he expected us to know. I guess it was a good idea because a lot of people loved his performance, but why simply settle for a performance from someone who had the potential to give you an experience? And why didn't he give us an experience?

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