As soon as he steps out from behind the decks, where he’s been providing tuneage and scratch work for the warm-up MC, Edan (Portnoy) reveals himself as a one-off in the rigidly conformist regime of rap. Dressed in a blue cotton, short-sleeved shirt, brown thrift store pants, sensible lace-up shoes and with his messy thatch of black hair, the white, 24-year-old Boston-based MC, producer and turntablist looks for all the world like Sean Lennon in alt-rock civvies.
Edan’s non-regulation front provides a neat metaphor for his bracingly eclectic, winningly irreverent approach to hip hop. Sure, he’s an old-skool revivalist paying respect to Slick Rick, Rakim, KRS-One and EPMD, but dude’s wordplay is both deliberately dumb-clever and casually clever-clever, his flow is dazzlingly fast ‘n’ furious and frequently dead funny. First and foremost, though, Edan understands the idea of putting on a show.
Forget tedious call-and-response routines, the deadening blank spaces left between raps, the relentless, self-bigging-up and the endless exhortations to “make some noi-oise!” This is not Edan’s way. He plays socially aware commentator, coolest dude on the block and post-modernist clown, drawing heavily from first album “Primitive Plus”, despite being here to promote his follow-up, the psychedelic cut ‘n’ paste trip that is “Beauty & The Beat”.
He’s joined by Bostonian partner-in-rhyme, Insight and the pair – who’ve plainly worked up a routine (albeit a loose one) – play off each other perfectly. They trade lines, then they join forces, Insight stretches out atop the onstage piano while Edan steps up to the front, then he nips behind the decks while Insight dashes up the venue’s stairs and along the gantry (let’s hear it for the cordless mic), spitting rhymes all the while.
There’s the occasional call-and-response exchange, sure, and we’re invited to punctuate line endings in “Rapperfection”, “Drop Some Smooth Lyrics” and “Mic Manipulator” but mostly, this is Edan and Insight’s show. Their focus and control are awesome and, if either reveals his fallibility – as, for example, when Insight executes the lamest spin in body-popping history, after first carefully orchestrating a collective “oooooh” – then so much the better for machismo-free demystification. LAUNCH leaves the room for all of five minutes and returns to find Edan and Insight rapping from the floor, encircled by madly whooping fans, while dozens more watch from the stage.
To hell with hip hop hierarchy – Edan may be a new fresh prince, but his poetry is for his people.
