November 20, 2023
The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD
Week: 366
This week’s thing: Thanksgiving week is always tough – most acts seem to finish tours right before, or launch them right after, so they have the break to spend time with their families and thing-a-week options tend to be limited. Found this Earl Sweatshirt show happening and though I’m not the biggest rap music fan myself, checked with a friend who is and he was down to go. How bad could it be, I thought? Well… I should have skipped the opener.
Music: 2/5: I’m sorry!! Maybe it’s not fair for me to go to rap shows when I admittedly do not love rap music. Maybe I should stop going to them moving forward. Maybe I will. But I went to this one and the music just generally was not for me, with a few exceptions.
Lighting/backdrop/visuals: 2/5: There were lights and they changed colors. So those were positives. But rather than anything interesting serving as the show’s backdrop, instead about 50 of Earl Sweatshirt’s friends kind of hung around on the stage milling about.
Overall vibe: 5/5: Now just because I wasn’t loving this show doesn’t mean the crowd wasn’t. Everyone seemed to be either a black guy around my age or a white college student from the University of Maryland. Either way they came together as one, if just for this one night, joined by their love of Earl Sweatshirt songs and their ability to rap along.
Bonus points:
Opener: -2 for MIKE, who was hands-down one of the worst opening acts I’ve ever seen. The music was bad, he was definitely high and the energy just felt wildly low for an opener
Stage banter: +1 for a few funny jokes
Amount of green lighting: +1 for at least a couple of green songs
Smell: +1 for a dank-smelling Fillmore
Final: 10/15