Mad Men maestro RJD2 returns to hip-hop roots

Lacy O’Connell, Arts Contributor

It’s Saturday night at the Paragon, and RJD2 will be on stage any minute. DJ Slam has just finished his opening set, and the air is electric.

A short, nondescript white guy jumps out on stage. The lights haven’t come up — he’s just getting ready to start. The crowd shouts and surges forward anyway.

The lights come up, and RJD2 takes the mic.

He’s barely said hello to the crowd before they start chanting, “RJ! RJ! RJ!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever played Halifax,” he says. He looks excited, and he promises “treats for your eyeballs and your earholes. So let’s get into it.”

At that, he kicks the show off with “A Beautiful Mine,” the theme song for the show Mad Men.

He’s not lying about treats for the eyeballs, either. He’s come armed with a projector, and to his left is a huge screen. The video is as hyper as RJD2’s beats; the visuals slip from kids dancing to brightly-clad street performers on stilts.

There’s someone spinning fire, flowers in bloom, and smokestacks sucking pollution back in. As this happens, the crowd is bouncing, screaming, chanting — his hands move so fast it’s hard to see what he’s actually doing.

Luckily, he’s set up a video camera next to him. Every now and then, the screen flips to his hands at work. He shows the crowd how he uses his drum machine and sampler.

“It’s fucking magic,” he says.

And it is.

Then, the crowd rushes forward again as RJ goes into another favourite: “The Horror,” from his 2002 albumDeadringer. It sounds like a cross between hip-hop and James Bond, and it’s a great example of what makes RJ stand out as a musician.

“Earlier in the year I put out a record called The Colossus. Did anybody hear it?” he asks.

From the cheering, the answer is probably yes.

There are no breaks in this show, no slowing down. The crowd is still dancing when he takes out a stuffed Mario doll holding a little hammer, and a puppet that looks like a barrel. He makes them dance across his sampler to the theme music from Donkey Kong.

When the show ends, the crowd still hasn’t had enough, and RJ comes out for his encore after about ten seconds. He says he’s got something else for the audience. He plays “Good Times Roll, Pt 2,” also from Deadringer.

Finally, the show ends, and RJD2 says he’s got some merchandise in the back. But the crowd wants another encore. He stops. Once again he says he’s got a little something.

“It’s a B-Side,” he says. “You probably haven’t heard it.” The crowd still dances as if it’s the opening number.

When the show is finally over, RJ tells the audience, “You guys couldn’t have been nicer.” They’re still screaming, but he makes his way off stage and the swell of bodies starts to subside.

RJ says that he’ll come back to Halifax if he gets asked. From the reaction he gets here, that shouldn’t be a problem.