The End of Shortcuts - Directions to a MaLLy Show

There’s no shortcuts in the Twin Cities anymore. Google Maps ruined that. Maybe social media ruined it too. No shortcuts, just secret paths. Last night I had the opportunity to take two iconic secret path routes on my way to and from the best rap show I’ve seen this year. If you live in the Twin Cities and you have a soul and a working set of ears you’ve been rooting for MaLLy for years. He’s a beyond proficient rapper with an immense dedication to professional presentation. He’s made many solid LPs, some which I’ve played bass on. But none of them stuck to my ribs. I would put them on when they came out, admire the craft and rarely revisit. His new record “The Sweetest of It All” is different and the release party for that album was really special. There’s no shortcuts in the Twin Cities and every inch of MaLLy’s journey is essential to this release.

One of MaLLy’s lyrics-turned-tagline is “unapologetically nappy”. There’s nothing Minnesota seems to love more than the apologetically nappy. Being unambiguously Black is far from career suicide here, but it wrongly closes twice as many doors as it may open. There’s no shortcuts, but there’s a secret path. MaLLy has his email list out at all his shows even the low key ones. He played with Heiruspecs two summers ago at Icehouse. ‘Twas a vinyl release for Heiruspecs, a decidedly low-key affair. But he had that email list out and I shit you not the morning after the show, before I had even flipped the pancakes for my up-bright-and-early daughters, he texted me asking for me to decipher one of the email addresses he got in case I recognized it. Hard work is embodied in the details. I love a master stroke, I love brilliance, but the infrastructure to share your brilliance relies on your dedication to your email list and to your craft. Especially if you are in a city where the coverage is limited and skews hipster.

If you can talk to directly to your fans, if you can talk directly from your life, if you tell your stories on your terms than the idea of being apologetic is just theater. MaLLy is Black and he had an email list full of people bouncing at Icehouse last night. One of the most dance positive fans was a portly white dude named Doug who was the entirety of the front row. He had an unfathomable wingspan. One lopsided dance move would bring him from stage left to stage right in a nanosecond. Nobody seemed more surprised by this wingspan than Doug himself. How do I know his name is Doug? He came up to me real close and said “my name is Doug”. I said “nice to meet you Doug” but did not volunteer my name. Doug stood there for a moment as we both wondered if there was a next step and if so what it was.

There are no shortcuts in the Twin Cities anymore and last night I didn’t need any. Before MaLLy’s show I went to a rehearsal dinner in Saint Paul for a wedding I’m officiating. After the mother of the groom poured out the last third of the Lagunitas IPA I had been drinking cause it was sitting on a random table while I used the bathroom, I sucked down two thirds of a Coors Light in a weird futuristic milk bottle and pointed towards Icehouse from Saint Paul. When coming off 94 West at the Hennepin/Lyndale exit and favoring Hennepin North I see no serious benefit time-wise to taking that first turn onto Dell Place and then on to Groveland off of the exit but it’s what I’ve done for twenty years if I’m going to Nicollet. And I’m in no hurry to get to Icehouse. One flyer says doors at 8. The ticket says 9. It’s 8:51. I’ve got plenty of time. But when I turn on Groveland it’s a wealth of shortcut memories. My girlfriend Anna taught me the shortcut in high school when she did all the driving. It was the cool way to get to Little T’s. It was so cool I’d use it inefficiently to get to the Electric Fetus. Take Groveland and I’ll go past the only church I’ve ever played a funeral it, I go past the therapist I went to briefly before she unannouncedly raised her prices and only told me after the session was done, what the fuck, past DeVon and Seana’s weird ass apartment I used to wait in front of for half hours at a time waiting for D for gigs. Past Andrea Swensson’s house where the staff of the Current started to understand that it would be necessary to unionize on account of a variety of fuckeries happening at the station. Past the place called Big E’s that Heiruspecs played a very strange show at in 2003. Past Nicollet Franklin. That’s where Acadia used to be. I saw a production of Glengarry Glen Ross there. Now it’s a Cajun Boiling. Sidebar: It’s wild to think about Acadia. Moved out of Nicollet Franklin. Moved to the West Bank. Regrouped. A city bus runs into it and busts the whole thing up. Elite veggie burger at Acadia.

Back to Franklin/Nicollet. There used to be a Superamerica where there also used to be a CVS. And there used to be a Starbucks across the street. I drive past the old Twin/Tone building at 25th and Nicollet. I always hope that in some wildly deep game of six degrees of Twin Cities music scene separation it would come in handy that my very first day of work for No Alternative records in the winter of 2000 was helping Kim Randall move out of Twin/Tone. The place was empty, a shell of what it was in the 80s, but it had been the nerve center of a very important chapter in underground American music.

There’s no shortcuts in the Twin Cities. I learned how to write press releases and keep good relationships with the press from Kim Randall’s apartment in Uptown that I helped her move her office into. The secret path was being able to iron out a press release before a lot of my peers. But, a press release’s potential is still limited by the press’s appetite for a given artist or event. We live in a city that will spill more ink on Dessa having a new line of alfalfa sprouted tortillas than on MaLLy having a new record. They both have nice press releases. I love them both deeply. If there was a knob I could turn that skewed the coverage more towards new records and less towards alfalfa sprouted tortillas I would. Sometimes I think when I’m doing the best at my life’s work I am very much turning that knob. Let’s be real. There’s no knob. There’s no shortcuts. But there is a secret path. I’m in a basketball-centric text group with some friends, one of the members is a bonafide 25-years-in-the-game-career-performer-artist and he said “I know good journalism when I see it”. I can’t recall a piece of writing about artist curated alfalfa sprouted tortillas that stuck with me, that stuck to my ribs. But I remember interviews, podcast episodes, reviews and yes even blurbs that hit me, that were worthy of discussion, that mattered in the discourse. The secret path is doing the work, listening to the record, going to the show and not copy and pasting someone else’s hard work. I know good music coverage when I see it, and I know good music coverage when I do it, and I’m trying to do it.

Even with my questionably efficient shortcut I have arrived at the MaLLy show profoundly earlier than I’d like to. There’s no shortcuts to an old person rap show. I’m in line at Icehouse and the two women in front of me are discussing planter fasciitis and the number it did on their running routine. The first conversation I have in the venue is with Terrell from Radio Pocho on KFAI and he confirmed my scheduling mistakes: DJ just Nine just started his set. I could’ve drank that whole metal milk bottle Coors at the rehearsal dinner party. But actually, getting to an old person rap show early is part of the program. Part of the experience. Part of the routine is the hilariously inaccurate set times. Your feet should be a little sore the next day. The ad hoc hosting should be provided by the performers. It is a wildly more communal vibe than the jazz, rock or classical things I see. The performers of next week are the attendees of this week. Medium Zach is on stage and he shouts out a couple of his people who are in the crowd. I am with my people. I don’t want to be with them just for 110 minutes while MaLLy performs. I want to be with them for the changeovers, the “hey remember when we” stories. I talk To Elliot Looney and a different man named Doug who has been a merchandising icon for years. Probably eighty people in the building at this point and two are named Doug. We are at a 2% Doug rating which seems very high. I would also like to seem very high so I go outside and smoke. Back with Elliot and Doug. Sharing stories. Some of the big national artists that Doug works for will sell 80,000 of a single t-shirt design on a tour. I can’t even understand that. How many t-shirts has Heiruspecs ever sold? Is it two thousand? I think it could be two thousand. I have no idea. It’s not 80,000.

I am at an old persons’ hip hop show definitively. One breakdancer is at the corner of the stage dressed like a business casual breakdancer. Medium Zach’s opening set is more Tortoise than Z-Trip this go-round. The breakdancer is attempting to get started but Zach has taken a slow tempo groove and pushed some of the instruments so far behind the beat I am questioning where the one is. So is Zach. So is the breakdancer. When I take a break I learn from the manager of Icehouse that said breakdancer is a high powered downtown Minneapolis attorney. The breakdancer is an attorney. I am at an old person’s hip-hop show.

The important part of the night isn’t the funny part. The important part doesn’t make a fit for the essay I’m writing. The important part is that after seeing every shortcut measured and announced on Google maps I saw an artist on stage who is allergic to shortcuts. I saw an artist who is many LPs deep into a career that has come with equal parts ups and downs and yet at this comparatively late stage in his career he is making the best work of his career. It’s not what I expected. After an artist has made 3-4 albums it is unlikely for them to move 15% or more towards better or worse. MaLLy’s new record is full of great decisions, small nuances, inspired production. My favorite song is Summers on the Southside. Production by Last Word. Two, count ‘em two, great guitar solos from Jeremy Yvilsaker.

It’s a painting. It’s a portrait. I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t skip a step, I wouldn’t trim a hi-hat. I’d never take a shortcut when the secret path brings me here.