Improv Hip-Hop Magic.
If anyone has seen Improvised Shakespeare, The Beatbox or HATERADE, it should be no surprise then that Andy Carey and Ross Bryant have come together again to put on a rap show for your viewing pleasure. (And if you haven’t seen the previously mentioned shows, might I recommend that you do so.) I personally am a sucker for hip-hop and then you tell me it’s improvised hip-hop, honey, you just made my day. These two pull suggestions out of the crowd throughout the performance to fuel their raps and then they’re off.
They began by pulling random words from the audience at the top of the piece. Words such as locations where people were from, their favorite words to say and materials they used at work. They then proceeded to make up a rap using all of the words pulled. How you make any sense of a rap that includes contact lenses, a calculator, South Carolina, Woof, Hoooha (Pacino style) and Virginia, you’ve got me. But they did so and they did it brilliantly. Then they asked for an era we were fascinated with and a rap group. I offered up the mid-sixties/Rat Pack style and someone else suggested Cypress Hill. Boom. Magic. Everything from Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis to the Cuban Missile Crisis and bomb shelters to foreshadowing Woodstock. Next, they picked two people out of the audience, found out a bit more about the details of their lives and sliced together a rap of how they would meet. Then asked for a location-bus stop. They proceeded to become different characters that would either ride or drive the bus. Everyone from the guy who woke up late because his alarm didn’t go off to the “white guy” stuck down on the south side to the bus driver telling another driver that they “are the asshole.” There was a rap about physics and scrunchies. There was a rap about legalizing marijuana. There was a rap about dicks and my favorite line from this one was Andy saying something along the lines of “girl I’ll come up on you from behind,” and Ross echoing this by sarcastically agreeing “That’s what all girls like. To get it from behind.”
This show is insane. I’m disappointed to say that it’s taken me so long to finally see it, but I will definitely be there next week for their last night of the run at iO. 10:30pm at iO. It’s free. It’s amazing. It will blow your mind. Do yourself a favor and get to iO next Monday night. You won’t regret it.
