This was not the case when I saw perform last Saturday night at the , yet I was anything but disappointed.

Born with a degenerative hip condition, Shannon incorporates elements of hip-hop dance, skateboarding and silent film acting into his performances, all while on crutches. That’s right, crutches.

Shannon was part of , presented in part by in conjunction with the . His solo show, , was a headliner.

Shannon’s disability is the focus of his narrative but not in the way you may expect. For part of his performance he sets up a laptop and projects images of his earlier street work on to a screen, describing the ways in which the public reacts to a disabled dancer.

Shannon used clips from the below video to illustrate this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Later in his piece, under a single spotlight and to the beats of the show’s DJ, , he attempts different variations on his rendition of the , a common break dancing move. The audience witnesses both his successes and his failures, as Shannon admits that his show is largely influenced by his roots in freestyle dance.

“There is no offstage,” an exasperated Shannon yells to the audience as he lay on the ground beneath his fallen crutches.

Audience interaction is an important component of Shannon’s work. His show is laced with elements of comedy and he encourages cheering. When a women seated in the front row left early in his set, he interrupted his performance to mimic her exit, all to the laughter and clapping of a full house.

What I found most striking about Shannon is not just that he dances on crutches ( also does this), but that he uses his art form to challenge notions of mobility, and even disability.

Early in his show he questioned why exactly dancing on legs is the accepted norm, asking – albeit sarcastically – “Why’s she dancing on her legs again? If she’s not dancing on her arms, I’m not going to see it!”

Shannon skateboarded and danced around the stage for 90 minutes using his crutches as extensions of his body, a feat I doubt many other professional performers could accomplish. What’s disabled about that?

The event runs monthly at Fortune Sound Club in Chinatown. The show on March 15 was the fourth since arriving in Terminal City in December of last year.

I say “show” because that’s really what Hip-Hop Karaoke, or HHK, resembles. Each performer is accompanied on stage by DJ Seko of the local DJ collective The Freshest, as well as the night’s host, DJ Flipout. And unlike traditional karaoke, there is no teleprompter from which to read lyrics.

One more thing: all songs MUST be hip-hop.

You listen to rap music?

The result is an energetic and entertaining showcase of your favourite hip-hop songs performed by some rather unlikely rappers. Here are a few from this week:

Performer:

Sam Masih

Song:

Bombs over Baghdad

Artist: Outkast

The flow of Outkast’s 2000 jam Bombs over Baghdad is incredibly quick, making it a challenging song to sing. Despite this, Masih mastered it in one week. His performance was one of the night’s best.

Performers: Kelsey Wood (L) & Amber Harder (R)

Song: Definition

Artists: Mos Def & Talib Kweli

Together Mos Def and Talib Kweli make Black Star, a hip-hop group that released one album back in 1998. Recently there have been rumblings that another is in the works. Harder and Wood covered the rap duo’s best-known song, Definition.

Performer: Thor Helgason

Song: I’m Not A Player

Artist: Big Pun

Helgason’s rendition of Big Pun’s classic is an apt example of what makes HHK so entertaining. There is nothing about him that resembles Big Pun, but Helgason went on stage and did his thing – and he did it well!

Growth: it’s a good thing

HHK originated in New York City, spawning similar nights in London, New Jersey and Toronto. The idea to bring it to Vancouver was hatched by Iverson and Gibson-Tigh last summer.

Toronto native Gibson-Tigh says everyone in the hip-hop scene knows about HHK.

“It’s impossible not to hear about it. It’s so huge in Toronto,” said Gibson-Tigh.

Since the first night in December the event has garnered a lot of attention, due in part to its promotion through social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

The promoters say they are excited about the growth.

“Everyone is entertained by the performers and we bring in 400 people on a Monday night. To me, that sounds like success,” said Iverson.

My recommendation? Ch-ch-check it out!

So I was stoked when I heard that The Beatnuts, a New York-based hip-hop group featured on the soundtrack, were on a 20th Anniversary Tour with a date in Vancouver. After all, who could forget Sammy Baptista skating to their jam Off the Books? (Admittedly, many people could, just not this nostalgic gal.)

I’ve been to enough hip-hop shows to know how they work: one or two opening acts, punctuated with danceable DJ sets, ending with the artists plugging their latest albums or alluding to future projects. The Beatnuts show on March 8 at Fortune Sound Club followed suit. (For the record, Fortune has an incredible

Funktion-One Soundsystem, making it a choice venue for live shows.) The crowd was enthusiastic, the song set was solid and overall I had a great time.

There was, however, one aspect of the show that especially pleased my hip-hop-loving heart: Vancouver emcee Emotionz, an opener. Emotionz, or David Nelson as he is legally known, looks more suited to accounting than he does the world of rap. Skinny, white and wearing glasses, he challenges many of the prevailing stereotypes associated with the musical genre.

I first heard Emotionz in 2003 as part of the Vancouver hip-hop group Fourth World Occupants. His unique voice, quick flow and distinct style resonated with me, solidifying his spot as one of my favourite obscure rappers.

My boundless enthusiasm for him did not translate to the friends that accompanied me to the show, however, with my incessant proclamation of his talent drawing eye rolls from my comrades. Despite this skepticism, his short set was the highlight of my night, complete with a beatbox freestyle that lasted nearly four minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seeing Emotionz live rekindled my appreciation for his art. His brand of hip-hop won’t appeal to everyone, but what he does, he does well, and I respect that. Plus bonus points for representing the west coast!

Postscript: In the vein of anniversaries, The Notorious B.I.G. passed away 13 years ago March 9. RIP, Big Poppa.

Let me explain. We’re discussing data visualization in class, and I thought it’d be interesting – and a learning exercise! – to analyze the lyrics of Billboard’s top ten hip-hop/R&B songs for the week of March 20.

I searched for the lyrics of all the songs using websites like eLyrics.net and SongLyrics.com and compiled them in a text document. I then used my mass of composite to generate a word cloud on Wordle.

And voila!

up on dvd

Aah hey! Gonna make love. Like, want baby? Nobody know!

Frequency is represented by prominence, with the most common word appearing the largest. In my experiment, the most popular word is “Aah.”

With little imagination I rearranged the top 10 words to read the following: “Aah hey! Gonna make love. Like, want baby? Nobody know!”

Riveting results? No, not particularly. Surprising sentence? Given the names of the songs analyzed (Sex Therapy, Say Aah and How Low, for example), I would again say no.

My experiment did, however, make me question what exactly makes these songs so popular. Do the themes of love, sex and relationships especially resonate with listeners or do these songs play without much thought given to their meanings?

I pay close attention to the actual words of the music I listen to, reaching beyond a catchy beat or chorus. In fact, some of my favourite artists are better suited to the title lyricist than rapper. Qwel and Brother Ali are two examples that immediately come to mind.

Music can be a powerful mechanism to spread a message. Take, for instance, Matisyahu, a Hasidic Jewish artist. Blending elements of hip-hop, reggae and rock, Matisyahu’s music is inspired by his religion, and this is represented in his lyrics. I haven’t done the analysis, but I think it’s safe to assume that the most common words in his songs cannot be arranged to form a sentence about making a secret baby.

My experiment was admittedly simple, and following the same steps in a few weeks when the Billboard charts have presumably changed will undoubtedly yield different result. But the point of the exercise was to step back and ask, “What exactly am I listening to?”

We’re taught to read news with a critical eye, but what about music? Simple: listen with a critical ear.