Rapper Bey sees humour in Montreal
Did you catch any of the Yasiin Bey festival this past week? The rapper, who used to go by the name Mos Def, has been all over Montreal — specifically, he was all over the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival.
On Thursday, he opened for Run the Jewels at Club Soda. Friday, he and Montreal rapper the Narcicyst hopped on stage at Osheaga for a track with Ottawa aboriginal DJ crew A Tribe Called Red. Saturday, the pair stepped in to replace controversial no-show Action Bronson at the festival. Then Bey dropped in on sets by rap deity Nas and new-school hero (and Saturday headliner) Kendrick Lamar.
But apparently, that wasn’t enough. Monday night, people on the Phi Centre’s mailing list received a curious invitation: to the world première of Bey’s standup comedy show the following evening.
Titled Happy Birthday! Shut Up., it bore a handwritten promise of material on such topics as “Drake, nigas (sic) on Mars and everything else.” Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. Tuesday. By late afternoon, the event was sold out.
After grooving through an opening set by Montreal hip hop producer Kaytranada, attendees cheered as Bey took the stage shortly after 10 p.m. What followed was a rare treat.
If it were a concert, the rapper would have run through a set of his greatest hits from his nearly two-decade career, people would have rhymed along to every word, and they would have gone home happy.
Instead, we got to hang out with a rap icon for nearly 90 minutes.
“This is a trip for me,” he told the crowd. “I’ve always wanted to do this. ... This is a real dream, the best day ever.”
He made fun of Canadian money (“Toonies? Loonies? Why is your money named after a cartoon production company?”) and Old Montreal’s horses (“Montreal: people, food, architecture, horses--t.”).
He confessed his laziness: “One of my favourite things is to do nothing, or as little as possible.”
He took pointed jabs at materialism in rap. “Rap is like if Donald Trump was black,” he said, surprised when his off-the-cuff observation got a roar of approval.
He poked fun at Drake, and especially Kanye West, whose outburst at a photographer wishing him happy birthday spawned the title for the show.
He goofed around a lot, using an over-the-top announcer voice for a recurring bit about an elderly rapper named Young Baby, and a company called Deal With It Records that would put out anything it wanted.
And he occasionally got serious, quoting street artist Banksy, reading from a book he had picked up called In Search of Civilization (by John Armstrong) and talking about the meaninglessness of fame: “I don’t have a relationship to fame. ... I’m more interested in trying to communicate in some meaningful way.”
It wasn’t exactly polished, and it often meandered, but it was frequently very funny, refreshingly unpretentious and thoroughly entertaining. Bey began and ended the show by playing the drums, just because.
“This is me,” he said halfway through the show. “This is just me, being myself.”
And he had so much fun, he decided to do it all over again on Wednesday.