Hudson Mohawke with The-Dream at Paradise Rock Club
As the opening DJ ends a drop-heavy remix of Ginuwine’s “Pony,” he queries the still-building crowd: “Who’s here to see The-Dream?” — an odd question, seeing as the de-facto headliner is Hudson Mohawke. Regardless, the audience explodes in enthusiastic response. Hudson who?
The-Dream (born and a.k.a. Terius Nash) is an artist whose most popular work has not been his own solo material; Nash has made big splashes in the industry and the charts as a writer for the likes of Beyoncé (“Single Ladies,” #1 Billboard Hot 100), Rihanna (“Umbrella,” #1 Hot 100), and Justin Bieber (“Baby,” #5 Hot 100), but has been unable to replicate these successes with his own songs, coming closest with his debut single “Shawty Is Da Shit” (#17 Hot 100). Herein lies the conundrum of The-Dream playing a small club as an opener: though he’s not big enough, solo-output-wise, to justify headlining or playing a larger space, he draws ultra-passionate fans who appreciate his whole body of work — the ones who couldn’t care less about the headliner.
The opening DJ set is always the mood-builder for a show. The-Dream’s tour DJ cut a line directly between the club-oriented pop-R&B of Nash’s heyday to the EDM-indebted sounds of modern R&B, using mixes of Nash-penned songs like Beyoncé’s “Love On Top” and his own “Dope Bitch” that nodded to the Hudson Mohawke/Diplo school of noisy, tastefully-drop-heavy maximalism. These updated dance mixes of Nash’s greatest hits served to assert The-Dream’s legacy in 2015— a legacy that’s in jeopardy as R&B falls from commercial dominance. Both The-Dream and his DJ tried to establish Terius Nash as the real headliner (there was no mention of Mohawke by either, incredibly), the unfair victim of a crippling lack of public recognition.
Despite outwardly exuding unwavering confidence and credibility, you could feel the pent-up frustration in The-Dream’s performance — and for good reason; his last few projects have materialized only after overwrought label drama and to diminishing critical and commercial returns; Terius Nash, the product, is at his lowest point of demand maybe ever. The-Dream doesn’t deserve this after all he’s done, and he’ll be the first to remind you of that: after doing “Ditch That…,” he vented, “Stop lookin’ at your phones, there’s a god on the stage!” Accordingly, he started his set by facing away from the crowd, arms outstretched in a faux-cross, draped in all black aside from a gold chain (and his new circa-“That’s My Shit” black top hat).
The-Dream was on a mission to prove his legacy; the setlist was hit-after-hit from his first couple albums. He augmented his bulletproof songwriting with his trademark harmonies, letting the eager crowd take the lead so he could hit his ad-libs. During “Walkin’ On The Moon,” he tried his best Michael Jackson dance impression to rapturous applause. As the set proceeded, Nash became more energetic, the ecstatic crowd response assuaging his nagging Kanye-esque concerns about not being appreciated properly. He shed his jacket to “Nikki”, the rumbling bass accelerating his momentum. By “Fancy,” he was ready to prove he could sing his ass off, dimming the lights and quieting the backing track to showcase his raw charisma and vocal power. “Falsetto” was life-defining, a fully-engaged crowd not so much singing as shouting the vocals back at Nash while he took the time to dance with and sing to a few fans.
The-Dream only stopped his roll once, for a moment of silence for Paris (he played Le Bataclan, the deadliest site of the Paris attacks, on September 7). “Boston ain’t scared of shit, though! I love Boston!,” he joked to end the serious moment as appreciation for the enthusiastic crowd. Ending on a roll of “I Luv Your Girl” (with a bonus acapella run-through of the first verse) and “Rockin’ That Shit,” he left the stage without a word before his DJ cut the last song. Clearly, he was satisfied; there was no plug for a new album or his new label with Jay Z (Contra Paris) — what could he say that his performance hadn’t?
The-Dream’s set seemed to imply that in order to sell himself in 2015, he wants to first sell you on late-2000’s Dream — to prove his viability and place in the canon. Of course, it’s hard to sell yourself as a traditional R&B artist in 2015 anyway, and concert culture isn’t making it easier. People want noise, lights, and danceability now; EDM has become the live music standard, and it’s becoming harder to sell tickets to something for which you can’t roll face. Although slight concessions were made by the DJ in The-Dream’s mixes, giving his songs the build-and-release tension so craved by the 2015 concert goer, The-Dream wasn’t here to sell merchandise to Hudson Mohawke fans — he was here to prove he shouldn’t be here, opening for Mohawke.
The change in mood between sets was palpable — Hudson Mohawke’s dazzling light show and loud-as-hell sonics encouraged more dancing; there wasn’t even a mic in front of Mohawke, so there was no audience interaction (actually, it made me wonder why the audience faces front at EDM shows — at a hip-hop DJ set, that would be bewildering); the energy saw no breaks as one song bled into the next. In fact, there was a noticeable shift in the crowd during intermission, many Dream devotees filtering out and Hudson Mohawke fans filling in.
As with Hudson Mohawke’s recorded output, his set was a more artful version of ear-bleed-inducing EDM. He had a drummer to his left, beating on acoustic cymbals and kick drums (which produced a nice chest-thumping crispness next to all the electronics) paired with electronic snares and toms (this allowed the drum sounds to change with each song, a nice touch). A second laptop-wielding man to his right triggered samples and used a pair of drumsticks of his own to hit MIDI pads. Interestingly, neither Mohawke nor his companions wore headphones, suggesting this show was totally pre-planned and not mixed on-the-fly. Mohawke only seemed to get loose near the end of his set, when his bandmates left the stage and he played a tropical house remix of Gucci Mane’s “Party Animal.” He left the stage with just a humble clap and “thank you,” epitomizing his roots as a bedroom producer unfamiliar with the need to really work a crowd. He didn’t even mention his good new album Lantern, but I don’t know, he didn’t seem too concerned (his old tracks under the TNGHT moniker with Lunice got the biggest pop anyway, especially “Higher Ground”).
The juxtaposition of The-Dream and Hudson Mohawke was weird on paper, and their respective sets did little to acknowledge the age and genre gap between the two. But that may be the reality of concert promotion in 2015 — in an era of genre-crossovers, maybe you need to book two artists whose Venn diagrams don’t share a lot of common ground to hedge your bets; The-Dream and Hudson Mohawke both got around an hour to play and drew two distinct, passionate, and adequately-sized crowds, so it was a success, sure. But you can appreciate The-Dream’s frustration that this is what his career is now — opening for the newest dude to work with Kanye (The-Dream worked with Kanye first!). It’s sad that a legacy R&B artist can’t get his own headlining tour while promoting his new EP (Crown, which is a promising return-to-form), but you can’t sell what the public’s not buying. And in 2015, the public is buying high-energy, low-stakes live EDM, not attention-required R&B sets.