...But the opening act, Witchdoctor, was so abysmally bad that he threatened to ruin the concert before it even began. His lame, obvious rhymes and poor flow (as well as his constant plugging of his new album during his set) only served to suck the energy right out of the room and ruin the rest of the show. I almost laughted out loud when he started rapping about being "real" when at the same time he seemed to embody every bad cliché of modern rap. Not only was his material bad, but he lacked any kind of stage presence, and seemed to fade into the background when his "crew" came onstage. He just looked uncomfortable up there, and had to rely heavily on the also mediocre talents of his douchtastic entourage (I'm looking at you, lanky white guy in the velour track jacket, baggy jeans and "Tigger" flat brimmed baseball cap).
There were times when Witchdoctor tried to get the energy of the audience back, predictably resorting to cheap lines like "Everybody here love getting HIGH!?" or "Raise your lighters in the air, everybody get their motherf*cking lighters in the air!" I felt like I was watching a bad comedian trying to get a cold audience back on his side with inane comments about everyday life. Except instead of "Yeah, I hate airplane food too, I can really relate to this guy!" the desired reaction was "Yeah I love getting mad wasted too! this guy's totally awesome!". It's the oldest cop-out in the history of stage performance and a clear indicator of a complete lack of ability. Yeah. We all like getting drunk, but when you can't rap to save your life, who really gives a shit?
There are artists who are talented, but exist beyond the mainstream by virtue of the fact that their material is too sophisticated or different to sell lots of records. Then there are others who simply lack the talent to break into the music scene. From his performance, I can only guess that Witchdoctor falls in the latter category. But hey, I could be wrong.
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