Prof, Grieves, Norman Sann, Khantrast, and Willie Wonka

Minnesota rapper, Prof, has the charisma and energy to keep his audience engaged throughout his performance. His rapping is aggressive, abrasive, and absurd. He delivers his music with a force that makes you take him seriously, but his lyrics are full of playful antics and obscene word play, which conveys a carefree personality to his music.

Prof is a powerful force when on stage, running around and belting out his rap lyrics. He is usually backed by his sideman, Rahzwell, who provides the backing tracks and helps pump up the audience. The music that Prof raps over is usually quite diverse ranging from ethereal synthesizers that create emotive tones that can be heard in the song, “Karma” or he might rap over a highly upbeat backing track that incorporates loud bass drops and use of disc scratching. His lyrics are also very diverse and cover topics that include his misfortunate upbringing in the ghetto as well as finding parties and having a good time.

Prof has played at many diverse venues ranging from large festivals to small clubs. His delivery is always energetic and gets the crowd revved up. Prof and his sidekick Rahzwell used to perform their shows only after both of them were completely drunk from all the drinks their audience members bought them, which created a wild show for everyone in the venue. Prof and Rahzwell are always having fun with the audience when they perform. During their song “Yeah Buddy” they take supersoakers or water bottles and start to drench their audience with water during the song.

Prof has proven himself to be a diverse rapper that can master both the serious and playful side of rap. He has been listed as one of Minnesota’s 20 best rappers and has the reputation of instilling joy into the audience whenever he performs.

Benjamin Laub, aka Grieves, is a multi-talented rapper/singer that I spontaneously checked out on a random trip to Seattle, Washington. He hails from the same location as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, and you can definitely see the similarity in style of the two acts; Laub, however, has a talent for singing which he includes in his songs.
For his set he opened with “Woah Is Me,” a song about life. Grieves writes his material on real life, and has a hell of a lot of fun doing it flawlessly transitioning from rapping his verses to singing his choruses. As he performs you can see how much he enjoys it, which emanates out to the crowd. He also performed an older song “Scar Gardens,” which, as he said, “changed up to keep things fresh.” I obviously didn’t know how it was different since it was the first time hearing the song, but for a first time listener I did end up going back and listening to the original since I liked the live performance so much.
Aside from “thanks” and introductions, he also talked to the crowd. In between songs he told a few stories of his move into Seattle and part of how he got into making music shortly after moving. He also included a bit of banter between himself, his guitar player and his keyboardist. He finished out the set with two more songs: “Shreds” and “Kidding Me,” and overall I left the show satisfied with the performance.