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Fun Fun Fun review: Slick Rick
Tammy Perez
FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
When Slick Rick “the Ruler” strode onto the blue stage almost 15 minutes late he wasn’t rocking a crown. His neck, however, was strung with a good 20 pounds of gold (gold-like?) chains, lest anyone forget his roots as one of hip-hop’s originators, from the early days in the Bronx. The show was billed as Slick Rick performing “The Great Adventures Of” and as such he rattled off a string of his greatest hits. His rhyming was fine. He leaned back and with a slight bounce of his head, spit the familiar material with solid diction and clarity. But he moved maybe five steps throughout the entire performance. He wasn’t quite low key enough to make you wonder if he was mentally rearranging his sock drawer, but he definitely wasn’t expending a lot of extra energy on the crowd.
Interestingly despite playing some of his most explicit hits (“Davy Crockett”, “The Moment I Feared”. Etc.) the notoriously nasty rapper seemed to downplay his raw side. After an abbreviated version of “Treat Her Like a Prostitute” he sheepishly murmured “Sorry ‘bout that one ladies” under his breath.
Predictably, he closed out his set with his biggest hit “A Children’s Story”, arguably the greatest story rap of all time, a strikingly nuanced tale of bad choices and inner city tragedy that’s as relevant today as it was 20 years ago. A true hip-hop classic, as soon as the beat dropped a roar went through the crowd. And feeding off the energy, for a moment Slick Rick got hype, he danced around a bit and hopped on one leg, and then it was over and, peace out, the Ruler was gone.
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