By Will Roper
Photos by Alex Durrant
July 17, 2018
Blueprint performs at Duffy’s Tavern in Lincoln, Neb., on July 15, 2018. Photo by Alex Durrant.
Two local hip-hop artists based in Lincoln and Omaha shared the Duffy’s Tavern stage Sunday night with a longtime national rapper and producer from Columbus, Ohio, who was performing again in Lincoln for the first time in three years.
The headlining act was Blueprint, who has been in the hip-hop scene for nearly two decades performing and collaborating with well-known artists such as RJD2, Atmosphere and Aesop Rock. Rappers M Shah from California and Static Soul from Lincoln accompanied Blueprint as the opening acts. Lincoln rapper Sleep Sinatra was also scheduled to perform but was unable to make the show.
The first artist to take the stage was M Shah alongside DJ Fly Cuts. With a multitude of original songs to perform, M Shah quickly had the initially small, quiet crowd up near the front of the stage with his quick and witty lyrical flow. As a self-described “people’s rapper,” M Shah’s bars had a large amount of depth centered on his life. DJ Fly Cuts also had some cool spin solos at the end of songs, and ducked down at the beginning of a Star Wars-inspired beat only to emerge as DJ Darth Vader. A friend of the duo also came on stage and rattled off some unique beatboxing chops, and the combination of him, DJ Fly Cuts and M Shah was wonderful.
Up next was Static Soul, an Omaha-based rapper who took the stage sans DJ Sunday night ahead of Blueprint. Above everything, Static Soul was both an incredible lyricist and performer, as in between fast, hard-hitting bars, he would joke with the audience and get them involved in his show. He said this was the first performance he had done without a DJ, but switching between tracks on pushing on to the next one seemed effortless. Static Soul shined as solo act as he rapped and paced back and forth on stage, bringing out a fiery energy that could be seen just as well as it could be heard. Like M Shah, Static Soul’s lyrics had much more depth than the common hip-hop of today, and he also made the point that all his songs were originals.
Last but not least was Ohio rapper Blueprint, who took over the stage alongside DJ Detox for an hour-long set full of classics and new tracks.
Over the years, Blueprint has put out a number of full-length studio albums, which include 1988 (2005), Adventures in Counter-Culture (2011) and Respect the Architect (2014). Throughout his set, Blueprint performed many songs from these records and others, and many in the crowd knew the lyrics and sang along. Where Static Soul engaged the crowd with playful banter, Blueprint took it to the next level by giving the crowd lines to sing for seemingly every other song, an effect that worked wonderfully. Blueprint had an infectious charisma on stage that one can only get from years of performance and loving the music, and it spread quickly throughout the small but dense crowd in Duffy’s Tavern. Most of Blueprint’s tracks also had an underlying positive message, and, similar to M Shah and Static Soul, contained a great deal of conscious depth and awareness as he rapped about poverty, racism and love.
Besides rapping, the multi-instrumentalist Blueprint also whipped out a trombone for one song and a small keytar for another that served to add layers onto rich, complex beats managed by DJ Detox.
Blueprint focused on new material for the latter half of his set, with tracks from his newest album Two-Headed Monster released earlier this year. Some in the crowd also knew the words to these songs as well, showing the still growing popularity of Blueprint after all his years in the game. His newer tracks stayed true to his older flow while still evolving through production. As both a rapper and producer, Blueprint definitely showed his talent in both arenas through the evolution of his past and present productions.
Overall, M Shah, Static Soul and Blueprint were phenomenal and brought a lively show to a Sunday night in Lincoln.
[flickr_tags user_id="kzumradio" tags="blueprint2018"]
Will Roper is an editorial intern with KZUM. Alex Durrant is a photography contributor.
