The festival was different (RiverBeat, not Beale Street), but the hometown love was unchanged and undiminished when the Memphis rap duo 8Ball and MJG made their storm-delayed entrance on the Budweiser Stage late Sunday afternoon in what marked the team's first performance in Tom Lee Park since 2014.
If the crowd's enthusiastic response didn't already testify to the duo's eminent status in Memphis hip-hop history, the presence of a notable fan would have: Paul Young was near the front of the stage for the entire show, in the VIP space, occasionally shaking hands and posing for selfies with citizens who leaned across the metal barrier to greet the first-term mayor of Memphis.
The rappers — who were raised in Orange Mound and became friends at Ridgeway Middle School before finding early musical success with Suave House Records in Houston, Texas — noted the mayor's presence and expressed love for Memphis, verbally and otherwise. The heftier member of the group ("straight from the underground/ fat boy from the Mound," as he rapped in "You Don't Want Drama"), 8Ball wore a T-shirt adorned with images of the late Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard, but on his head was a baseball cap with the classic University of Memphis Tigers logo.
Backed by five musicians (including a turntablist) and two vocalists, 8Ball (born Premro Smith) and MJG ( Marlon Jermaine Goodwin) performed on an unadorned stage that was an ideal setting for their unpretentious but not unsophisticated nor unmotivated music. Standing tall like titans while the band recreated live versions of the sampled classic-soul sounds that appear on some of their records, 8Ball and MJG traded verses while retrieving hard-knock-life street narratives, playful sex boasts, and anthems of uplift from their catalog of nine studio albums (starting with "Comin' Out Hard," in 1993).
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The hour-long show was old-school in a powerful way that felt fresh and timely. As they rapped on on "Paid Dues," from the 1999 album "In Our Lifetime": "I had to give up the streets for the beats."
Many of the several hundred people in attendance mouthed the lyrics in time with the rappers, from "Got a family in Memphis/ Got a gang in Texas" to "Ho's with no clothes showing love/ Shaking that ass in the club." Acknowledging the antisocial or lewd behavior chronicled in some of these songs while reminding the crowd of its frequently escapist purpose, 8Ball commented: "We all here for the same reason — have some fun and listen to some music."
Later, he added: "I don't want none of you little white girls in the front row to shoot up no clubs. I know what the music do to you."
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 8Ball & MJG feel the hometown love from RiverBeat fans including Memphis Mayor Paul Young
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