Two of Asia's hotter hip hop bands are set to play the Taipei International Convention Center (
Headliner Rip Slyme, a crew of four MCs and one DJ, is making its first Taiwan appearance. The group is currently touring to promote its latest CD, Tokyo Classic, released in late July. The group has been around since at least 1994, when it banded together and began showing up at MC nights and other informal gigs. A year later, they released their first album, Lip's Rhyme, which despite the punctuation error, is actually the source of the group's name. They continued to kick around Japan's underground scene for several more years until they were finally picked up by a promoter that saw some real potential in Rip Slyme. Ever since, they've been taking off -- first domestically in Japan, and more recently in the trans-Asia market. So far this year they've already played stadiums in Japan, picked up the Best Hip Hop award at MTV Japan's Video Music Awards and opened for the Chemical Brothers and the Pet Shop Boys in Hong Kong.
LMF joins Rip Slyme for at least three stops on the album release tour, including tonight in Taipei and shows last week in Hong Kong and Shanghai. LMF, short for something slightly offensive in English, has also been around awhile. The group formed in 1992, and has gone on to become something like Hong Kong's version of the Beastie Boys. But not being from Brooklyn, there's not much of the street grit and rough edge about them. LMF is definitely Hong Kong -- as in they can't help being at least a little bit about designer labels and hair styles. But they still put on a good show with lots of energy, fist pumping and hard cadenced freestyles into the microphone. Last summer in Taipei, they showed up with a pretty big crew and put on a solid performance at the Formoz Festival, a concert that brought in top talent like Biohazard and Yo La Tengo as well a number of top Japanese bands.
So the music should be pumping as much as the venue will allow -- which is always a problem for indoor popular music performances in Taipei. The Taipei International Convention Center is designed for conventions, speeches and occasional theatrical performances, so the seating was designed for sit-and-watch crowds.
In that kind of atmosphere it can be hard to whip up a pit of fist-pumping fans, but who knows, maybe it will happen if the security guards don't stop the show.
The concert begins tonight at 7:30pm and tickets are on sale through ERA ticketing outlets for NT$1,000 to NT$1,800. The Taipei International Convention Center is located at 1 Hsinyi Rd., Sec. 5, Taipei (
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