Eprhyme's Album Release Party

On Wednesday night, I attended Eprhyme's Album Release Party down at Drom in the East Village. I went as I had met Eprhyme (Eden Pearlstein) a few weeks ago at a friend's wedding in Indiana and I figured it'd be a good cultural event to attend (for having lived in NYC for five years, I seldom attend music events, etc.). I arrived at some p

oint during the first act's performance and hung out until Eprhyme took the stage. Actually, it was with Shir Ya'akov, his Darshan groupmate (as well as with Diwon). They

performed about five songs, generally with a Jewish flavor. I really enjoyed their stuff: it was a good balance with Shir's singing and Eprhyme's rapping. Their first song was about the holidays (I think entitled "Why Wait"), which was neat. Their third song was a little bit more dancey, bassey, more uptempo

and involved the phrase "יוצר אור ובורא חושך", which was neat. I also liked their fourth song, which involved a celloist and was offbeat.

One problem that I had with the entire evening's performances was that the music was playing so loudly that I had to strain to understand what the performers' lyrics were. Oddly enough, once I put earplugs in my ears, I was able to better understand the lyrics and I didn't feel like I was contributing to my eventual deafness, but, at the same time, also could hear the music just fine.

After Darshan performed, KoshaDillz did his thing.

KoshaDillz, notable for his recent Summer Jams battle win, performed also about five songs, of which I enjoyed his "Bubblegum" track. He definitely had a lot of energy - that's for sure, and tried to rally the crowd to this cause.

After KoshaDillz departed from the stage, up came Eprhyme

returned to do his own songs. Again, I struggled to discern the lyrics on account of the loudness of the music, but he definitely was vibing. The second of his songs was "Punklezmerap", the music video promoting his new album. The third song was an interesting one on the way to getting to peace is accomplished through love and not through the military complex - clever. The fourth song was one with which he prefaced by stating that he doesn't just not rap about nothing. The fifth song was a nice offbeat track. His sixth song was "Bohemian Rhapsody", a song about Olympia, Washington. He had several others to finish off, including a freestyle (one song involved the line "When you raise a fist, make sure you blow a little kiss" - clever).

At this point, this was all the music for which I had come down to hear and expected. However, up came a guy of whom I had never heard - Homeboy Sandman. His first two tracks made me stay (I wasn't the only one). He then broke into an interesting freestyle on the need for better nutrition, as bad nutrition is a serious danger (trudat). As an aside, I was amused by the demographics shifting from a larger Jewy crowd for Darshan's and Eprhyme's performances to less so of one for Sandm

an's performance (when I left, after everything had finished, very few of the yidden I had seen earlier had remained).

Anyways, Sandman definitely was quite talented and eventually brought up his crew, AOK Collective (including Fresh Daily), to join him up on the stage. I enjoyed the rest of the performance and, in particular, I enjoyed 8thW1's MC'ing (so much so that I bought his new CD, lovemoneyandmusic).

On the train back, I saw Shir Ya'akov who, among other things, informed me that Darshan is planning on releasing their upcoming album in October and may be having a release party. If there stuff is as good as it was on Wednesday night, It'd be worth my time to attend.