The plan seemed flawless: Bring a famous rapper who has sold millions of records to a club and have him perform with an equally famous DJ. The club owners must have been thinking the Ice-T and Afrika Islam combo would be a wet dream for the hordes of Taiwanese teenagers who idolize American rap culture, even though they barely understand the lyrics. Unfortunately they were wrong.
The venue, Ministry of Sound (MoS), has all the right things a club needs: quiet corners, nice furniture, scantily clad women, two dance rooms -- the large dance room with a stage set up for Ice-T in this case -- deafening bass, bars everywhere, so you never have to put too much effort into getting a drink, and more scantily clad women.
Inside MoS on Friday night you had the usual Taiwan club atmosphere, consisting of many people doing tame head nodding instead of dancing, the secret teenage technique of not smiling, b-boys breaking and body popping and the unfortunate lack of people seeking to make fools of themselves. The night's entertainment began with dancers on stage doing boy-band moves with pyrotechnic flames shooting out everywhere. The flames did seem a bit dangerous on stage, but thankfully no one got hurt. However, they did steal the show away from the dancers, which doesn't say much about how entertaining they were.
The forever-talented Afrika Islam came on next and played some fairly decent mixes and, surprisingly but pleasantly, an oldies soul tune, which didn't go over so well with the Taiwanese ghetto-superstar wannabe's. He kept the club bouncing though, so his mission was accomplished.
Then the hype man came out, shouted the usual hype words of "when I say `hell' you say `yeah,'" and other such obvious yet never-out-of-style hype tactics. The hype man also spat out some mediocre rhymes that somehow managed to entertain. Then came the introduction to the one and only Ice-T! And the big man came on stage with class only he could pull off and with flames and other pyrotechnics to complement his entrance.
The enthusiasm was huge and was made tangible by cheering and shouts, and then Ice-T did his thing. He even showed off his comedic skills and made the part of the crowd who understood him laugh on many occasions, but only received a few murmurs on one occasion when he described his fans in an insulting way. Ice-T had Afrika played some old school tunes, which got the most attention from people -- namely the old school hip hop fans -- like Colors, I'm Your Pusher, You Played Yourself and the very old but forever-classic Six in the Mornin'.
Unfortunately his biographic and poignant That's How I'm Livin' had the majority of crowd acting bored. Due to this, Ice-T stopped Afrika from playing the also emotional Tower and decided to freestyle instead, which did get some of the crowd hyped. He also did some of his new songs, which regrettably had the typical and forgettable gangster-rap rhythm and rhymes, but the beat managed to elicit some dancing.
In the end it was unsettling to see that most people weren't dancing or getting hyped to such a great show, the bored onlookers seemed only interested when hype tactics were put into play. Ice-T knew this so he ended early -- he only performed for about 50 minutes -- and surprisingly he was let go by the crowd very easily, with only one person shouting :"encore. The few Ice-T fans did love the show, but the unenthusiastic crowd dampened the whole evening.
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