Good show by the J5 Musketeers. Despite 3 years of sitting on their asses, tonight reaffirmed that this group has the most raw rhyming talent of any group of humans ever assembled. They don\'t have as much image or emotion as other popular rappers, but when you consider only the pure skill of being able to drop English words over a beat, forget about it. No contest. And they segue as well as any jamband. They\'re show layout is totally original. There was a 7-song and a 5-song segue in this show, plus they always throw in plenty of teases of hip hop standards. They did a lot of the same segues that they were doing 3 years ago at Bonnaroo \'02 and only did 3 new joints. Certainly a letdown there, you\'d think they could\'ve been doing this tour with a new album in their hands. (They did claim that a new album was "done" though.) But the energy was tremendous, especially for a Tuesday. Cut Chemist was not present, but everyone else was, including Mr. Chali 2Na. Let\'s get one thing straight, this guy is a frikin stud. If you know anything about J5 then you already know this, but he is the superstar of the act, no doubt about it. Soup fits nicely into the 2 spot and the rest of the guys kind of round out the team. It\'s like 2Na is Shaq, Soup is D-Wade, and the rest of the guys are the rest of the guys. When you go to see them, you know that everyone out there is really good. But when 2Na raps or when Shaq slams, you know that\'s what you came to see. All in all, it\'s not clear how much new stuff these guys have, but one thing\'s for sure, they still have it.
