so a few days ago, the show that was “bun b and friends” turned into something of epic proportions. i wasn’t about to pay $31 in this recession to see a hometown guy who plays several shows a year. however, it was announced very close to the show date that his ‘friends’ would be houston favorites devin the dude, paul wall and chamillionaire, as well as out of towners the cool kids, drake and lupe fiasco. this is just too ridiculous of a line-up to ignore, so i added another $31 to my piling credit card debt to be a part of this.

hit the jump for the full show review, and tons of videos.

-grizzly

lupe fiasco – shining down

turns out that day would be full of personal problems and shit, and i nearly missed the show. anyway, i didn’t wanna waste $31 so i “forced” myself to go. upon arriving at 9 p.m., i was pretty agged that a house DJ was on, and would continue to play the southern shit that plagues houston radio until 10 p.m. at around 10:15, some artists would hit the stage. bitch, that was a mistake.

we would then be treated to about two hours of completely awful and completely forgettable opening acts. i legitimately can’t tell you the name of any of them besides mddl fngas, which i refuse to link. fuck them all.

at around 12:15 a.m., the show finally got interesting. bun b came out, much to the crowd’s delight. he ran through classic ugk joints and did his own thing. even though he left off crucial songs from his set, (see: “the game belongs to me,” “that’s gangsta,” “game’s been good to me”) he did do “damn i’m cold,” “one day” and all of “big pimpin” sans jay-z. and rest assured, the entire crowd sang pimp c’s verse without missing a note.

then we were treated to some of his friends, which included a shit storm of locals (esg, trae the truth) and i know a bunch of you houstonians feel this, but they all sound the fucking same to me. and no z-ro, no care. also, the dudes who produced weezy’s “got money” are apparently a rap group. play-n-skills? really? complete fucking joke.

then we got some paul wall (no care) and chamillionaire, who i had previously forgotten about. he came out hard as hell though and performed “in love with my money” with paul wall and “turn it up,” bringing out lil flip. huge laughs at that. devin the dude is cool, but not my thing. i’m pretty sure i got contact high during his set too.

around 1:15 a.m., we’d eventually get a pretty short set from the cool kids, which had hammer bros., another song off gone fishin’, black mags, and the pennies remix with bun b. great set which really kicked off the last (and best) hour of the show.

bun let everyone know that he wasn’t the last one from chicago, which cued right into lupe storming out and completely turning the place inside out. by this point, i couldn’t hear anything but everyone singing lupe’s jams. he did “superstar” and “hip-hop saved my life,” and also performed “shining down” for the first time ever. he closed off his set with “swang on em,” using bun into his set. ridiculous. 22s or better.

last came drizzy. dude’s got an incredible hype machine behind him and came out swinging. he did only one song for the dudes and knocked out uptown right away. the rest of his set was for the ladies (“best i ever had,” “every girl,” “november 18th”). dude’s the man, but outside of the hype, he really has a lot of work to do on his live show. he can’t sing worth a shit and he just ends up yelling over the beat. work on it, you’ve got too big of a future to let that slide.

overall, minus the hour of bun b and the final hour, this show was a complete disaster. it reminded me a lot of the wale show i caught last month. god knows who lets all these d-grade rappers get on bills that they are far from good enough for. if it weren’t for most of these guys, i’d have been home by 12:30, as opposed to 3:30.

however, the likes of bun, lupe, drake and the cool kids made it worth it.

lupe fiasco – hip hop saved my life

bun b – swang on em f. lupe fiasco

drake – uptown f. bun b

drake – november 18th

the cool kids – hammer bros.

bun b – get throwed/big pimpin

bun b c/o UGK – one day

all videos courtesy of onenecktwochains. i had a bunch of my own videos, but whoever did these videos was about 10 feet closer, so i just saved myself the trouble of having to upload all of it.

-grizzly