This is the first post for a new category titled All The Way Live. I don’t go to as many live shows as I once did but I still make it out occasionally. The idea of this new category is to talk about an artists live performance instead of their recorded material.

One of my biggest gripes with hip hop shows is that they are often on weekdays and have multiple support acts before the main act finally performs at 1am. I actually skipped going to a show the night before Oddisee I saw because I knew it would be one of them late shows.

Oddisee thankfully only had one support, unfortunately I arrived a late and missed the support. When I walked in Oddisee and his band were already on stage performing the Ready to Rock which is the first song off the last album so I assume this means I did not miss too much. The venue was the Garrison to which I’d never been before. It’s a small to medium venue. For a show that seemed to have little to no advertising there was good sized crowd. Oddisee’s positive lyrics and attitude carried to the crowd to create a really positive vibe.

Oddisee produces his own music but for this tour had a four man band. The band consists of a guitarist, drummer, keyboardist and a DJ. The keyboardist and guitarist Oliver Daysoul occasionally provided melodic vocals for hooks or atmosphere. With the live band there was little need for banter between songs as they were able to keep the music flowing as they transitioned between songs, on of my favorite moments was when they slipped in the hook from The Pharcyde’s Runnin between songs. Oddisee mentioned that he has family in Toronto and had often visited Toronto in his youth. It was cool to hear him mention some particular areas he’d had visited instead of the rapper standard of referring to Toronto as T-Dot.

Oddisee’s rapping was very impressive, his delivery was clear and seemed effortless. After an approximate one hour set Oddisee took a short break before returning to the stage for an encore. At this point someone in the crowd  shouted acapella. He looked at his band like “should I?” he then proceeded to blow us away with an amazing performance.

Most of the songs performed were from the Tangible Dream album. If you get a chance to see these guys live a recommend it. Definitely one the the best shows I have been to in some time. The videos below ar enot from the show I was it but give a good idea ofwhat to expect.