Thursday night brought only the second E & A show in three years when Eyedea and Abilities performed at the High Noon Saloon. Backed by solid set of opening acts, Eyedea and Abilities brought the audience back to 1984 in a roots-based hip-hop performance fueled by freestyles, battle raps, and scratches.
For those of us who wished to delve into underground hip-hop beyond Atmosphere, the next logical step was Rhymesayers’ labelmate Eyedea and Abilities. Following the release of their acclaimed 2004 sophomore effort E&A, the duo of Eyedea and DJ Abilities went their separate ways, much to the dismay of the hip-hop community. The future of this dynamic tag team has been very much in the air over the past three years up until this past August when they announced their reunion.
While his lyrics may not be as smooth as contemporaries Slug or Brother Ali, Eyedea makes up for this with his lightning-fast delivery and freestyling skills that earned him victories at the Scribble Jam MC battle and the HBO-televised Blaze Battle.
The duo opened the night with “Man vs. Ape,” their posturing rally against modern society, from E&A. From there, Eyedea and Abilities cycled through an arsenal of explosive beats and rhymes from their back catalog, along with an array of new songs.
E & A plowed through crowd favorites including an anthem decrying the monotony and frustration of 9-to-5 jobs, “Exhausted Love,” along with First Born‘s “Liquid Sovereignly” and the new track “Scapegoat.” As the show reached the halfway point, the group settled into a 20-minute interlude, which found Eyedea trading freestyles with other MCs on top of DJ Abilities’ improvised scratches and beats.
Eyedea and Abilities closed with two of the best representations of the skill harnessed by this duo. The first, “Paradise,” highlights the downfall of a doomed relationship, through the eyes of both men and women. Following that, the set came to an end with the dark, introspective “Glass” from E&A, a song illuminated by Eyedea’s frantic take on the classic dynamic-build model of song structuring. After a short pre-encore break, Eyedea and Abilities put a cap on their night with the song “Now,” which found their eager audience singing along to all of the parts that weren’t presented in Eyedea’s breakneck lyrical speed.
In the song “E&A Day,” Eyedea sings, “It ain’t your weak reviews that keep people intrigued with us/ They leave our shows thinking what these kids do is unachievable.” This was certainly true of Thursday’s show. Eyedea and Abilities left the High Noon Saloon spellbound with their modern interpretation of old-school hip-hop. Showing that time has only refined their skills, E &A communicated a sense of maturity through their new music which was more opaque on their 2004 release. With such an impressive showing so early after the reunion, it’s a wonder Eyedea and Abilities broke up in the first place.
