Yo Majesty!

Caught the Yo Majesty Show this weekend, after hearing Marilis rave with love about them. I met a sparse crowd on first arrival, unsurprising for a Monday show, but Lambi was kicking happy with already near irresistible beats from the jovial Sixtoo. I found Tristan with Romane, one of the owners of Lambi, drinking cognac by his bar. Like the gangster I am, I joined, was welcomed, poured a lovely one and was soon singing, dancing, and trading info on good events going down in Romane’s venue in the coming week (he recommends the show in there this Saturday.. Today!)

At first I think Meyer from Blue Skies and Dan from POP and their teams were stressed by the turn out, or maybe by the fact that the headliners were still on route. Friends kept coming in though, and by the time the powerhouse brilliant women of Yo Majesty took the stage at 12:20 there was a good pack of maybe 75-100 people standing hipster-ready to be impressed.

Up before Yo Majesty was Giovanni Marks or Subtitle, who unfurls long relentless streams of rhymes and seemingly endless breath stored, presumably, in the length of his 8 foot frame. Alright, maybe 8 is exaggerating, but I wish I had a picture of him talking to Sixtoo standing on a riser and still looking up into Subtitle’s eyes and hot pompadour. Subtitle is great, bending rhymes about what’s happening right in front of him into the patterns of his songs and roaming like a rapper should from grandiose things to the grit and graft of day to day. I definitely heard “Gmail” in his lyrics and I swears I heard the words “Open Source” too, but maybe I’m just wishful / nerdy.

Yo Majesty, when they claimed the stage, hollared us all into sweaty submission - they told us they’d been to Montreal before and knew we were crazy so to quit playing the shuffle and headbob game and dance. We obeyed. They seemed satisfied. One of the Majesty’s went bare chested after a song or 2 and stayed that way for the rest of the set. What was powerful was not the shock value of boobs but the happy crazy-show normalcy, she was just a human hot from the intensity and speed of her prowling rhymes under the lights, and we were Montreal, la belle ville, unphased. At the end of the rawcus, dirty south, smart quick fire set she took the mic and explained what had been subtext - “I don’t go topless for you to jerk off to later, by the way, I do it because I’m a grown up and I do what I want!!” between my jolt of fuck-yeah in response to that and the chorus “WE … ARE … YOUR FRIENDS!!” I left feeling all girly glowy empowered and Aaaaaaa-ok.

“Kryptonite Pussy” was good too.