Brian Slattery Photo
“We just came here to party / We just came here to party / We ain’t trying to hurt nobody,” Corey Lee rapped from the stage to a packed house on Sunday night, part of a fleet and varied lineup of artists that took over the Outer Space for ReignFest 2015.
Sunday’s hip hop show came on the tail end of a string of successful fundraisers for the complex of venues in Hamden.
The first few sets of ReignFest were short and sweet. New Haven’s Kyle Jamal brought in a set of material that let the crowd see where he’s been going for the past few months. As charismatic as ever, he showed a more focused side that deepened his set. Turns out he’s also a really good singer.
Where Jamal used personality, Bugatti, also from New Haven, used precision, letting the words and his rat-a-tat delivery do the driving.
Corey Lee, up from Philadelphia, stalked the Outer Space’s stage — and sometimes the floor — with experience, honesty, and humor. Likewise, dancer Monique used every corner of the space she had.
Then Eugene Junior, down from Boston, wound the crowd around his finger, starting a longer set a capella and then busting into a tight, varied flow that had people shouting back to him, cheering him on.
“What we do is we spread seeds,” Junior said. A few people laughed. “Not those kind of seeds,” he said. The second half of the set had an experimental, nearly cinematic bent to it, as Junior rapped over recorded conversations and harmonizing voices.
As it got late and the crowd boiled down to the die hards — it was Sunday, after all — Tea Montgomery adopted a more relaxed, almost romantic vibe, even on his grittier numbers. If Junior went out of his way to reach out to the audience, Montgomery reeled them in.
Which was when IZA brought the energy all the way up again. Tearing through a pumping set, he wrapped it up with a mic-dropping a cappella piece that brought a final round of cheers from the enthusiastic fans that had stayed until the end.
So did ReignFest reign? The answer lay in the audience that lingered, swapping jokes, handshakes, hugs, and conversation. A little more like it was Friday than Sunday.
