Saturday the 26th an up and coming rap group by the name of Shoreline Mafia performed at local music venue/restaurant the Top Hat. Shoreline Mafia was founded in 2016, and consists of 4 members signed by Atlantic Records. Some of their well known songs are ‘Bands,’ ‘Nun Major,’ and ‘Musty’. The concert sold out quickly, leaving many fans desperately searching for last minute tickets. 

The concert was aimed to begin at 9:30 with doors opening an hour earlier, but by 7:00 fans were lined up down the block. At 8:30, the line hadn’t moved, and Top Hat employees urged concert goers to enter from the back door where there was no line. The scheduled openers were lesser known rappers 1TakeJay and Azchike. This is where the night began to go downhill. No performer was in sight when 9:30 rolled around, and the crowd was getting impatient. Finally someone appeared on the stage, although confusingly enough it was neither 1TakeJay nor Azchike. Honestly, it’s still unknown who this replacement opener was. He himself didn’t even seem to completely know what was going on. Playing sort of spin-offs of other rapper’s popular songs, and frequently asking the crowd what they wanted to hear in between awkward transitions from one obscure remix to the next, it was an overwhelmingly unsatisfactory performance. At one point he had an also unknown female rapper (potentially from the audience) join him on stage where she performed a song of her own which actually turned out to be surprisingly good, perhaps even the highlight of the evening. After what seemed like a never ending opening performance, 2 members of Shoreline Mafia finally came on stage. Confused as to where the other half of the group was? Welcome to the club. The rappers who did perform were the founding members, Ohgeesy and Fenix Flexin. Research on the mysterious disappearance of Rob Vicious and Master Kato, the missing two, turned up nothing as to why they were not at the Missoula performance of the OTX tour. 

If you’ve ever attended a concert, you know that to have it go successfully, the crowd needs to be engaged. To engage said crowd as displayed by the Hellgate’s own student section, you must communicate with them. Chants, questions, call and response, etc. If you just wanted to sit there, blankly staring at a performance, watch a YouTube video, or even just listen to their music from the comfort of your own home. It’s safe to say Shoreline Mafia took crowd interaction as a suggestion, not a necessity. This is not the move with a Missoulian audience, especially one mainly composed of teenagers. Other concerts such as Felly, Skizzy Mars, and Mike Stud, were also teenage targeted concerts, and excluding Felly, although these other artists were somewhat lesser known, there is no doubt that their performances surpassed Shoreline Mafia’s. Attempts were made at crowd simulation, for example a mosh pit was started, however moshing is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “dancing to music in a violent manner involving purposefully jumping up and down and colliding with other dancers”, which is a difficult task when the music is chill toned, slow bassed, and could almost be described as lo-fi. Ohgeesy himself would seemingly spur of the moment yell to whoever was controlling the lights to change their colors, creating an unorganized, chaotic vibe. Furthermore, the songs that were well known and actually could be sung along to were few and far between. Whether or not there was a set list of songs is unclear, but doubtful. The performance of some of their unreleased music which obviously no one knew was the beginning of the end for Shoreline Mafia and when the lights came on signaling the end of the concert it caught everyone off guard and left confused about whether the concert was actually over, since the performers filed off stage without so much as a word to the crowd. Overall, the Shoreline Mafia OTX tour was underwhelming, and although they truly are decently talented musicians, their concert left something to be desired.