Warm It Up Kane

We went to see Big Daddy Kane perform at a local night club, Tabu, in the MGM Grand Hotel. And while I don't recall all of his songs, there were enough tunes that brought back days of sweating on the dance floor in college, all cramped up in the basement bar, when the biggest concerns were paper deadlines, exams, dance recitals and drama department auditions. Ah, those were the days. The Tabu crowd was relatively young, although there were definitely some who were old enough to have jammed when Big Daddy Kane was considered current, like my husband (who was rapping all the lyrics back at Kane) and myself. Kane even called people out, asking the crowd first to make noise if they were over 25 (which excluded the fellow cast members who came out with us), and then to make noise if they were over 30 (no, we weren't as loud a group, but we still let our presence be known). It's funny how nostalgia can create familiarity with strangers; I found myself eyeing the people who appeared to be in my age group, almost conspiratorially, as if we had a shared past that made us brethren in this increasingly younger world. I think even Kane felt the fade of his spotlight in the collective hip-hop consciousness of the club crowd, keeping his set short and sweet, his exit from the stage (which was actually thick wooden tables put together to create an impromptu stage/platform) almost abrupt. And too soon. Oh Kane, you were just warming it up!