Beast Coast (Joey Bada$$ and Flatbush Zombies) @ RBC Echo Beach - Toronto, ON, Canada (SUPPORT: The Underachievers and Pro Era)

Beast Coast is a Brooklyn, New York hip hop collective that was formed in 2012 by former rapper of the collective Pro Era, Capital STEEZ, followed by commercially and critically-acclaimed Pro Era rapper Joey Bada$$. The rap group was formed in Brooklyn’s two highly populated African-American neighbourhoods, Bedford-Stuyvesant (also known as Bed-Stuy) and Flatbush. The collective also features such groups like Flatbush Zombies, The Underachievers, and other Pro Era members like Kirk Knight, Nyck Caution, and CJ Fly. With the members love of hip-hop culture, pro-Black and pro-radical culture sentiments, anime, and cannabis culture, all members have provided their new and older fans with a strong catalogue of individual and group projects, as well as performing multiple tours together and collaborating on a variety of songs together.

The collective has maintained their word on staying true to their movement and viewpoints, as well as provide great content for their day one fans, as well as newer fans of the Beast Coast movement. The collective has released their debut album through Columbia Records, entitled Escape from New York, from this May and have managed to keep fans busy with a variety of festival and tour dates, one of which being Toronto. As a lover of their music and their viewpoints of world change and reformation, I had a great opportunity and moment of showcasing their performance at Toronto’s RBC Echo Beach. Up first on the stage were members of the Pro Era group, CJ Fly, Nyck Caution, and Kirk Knight. The Pro Era openers did pretty well for their set, since they brought their strong energy and good lyrical content for their fans, as they performed and managed to hit those hard-hitting lyrics well. The setup on stage was on point and it brought a sense of remembrance for the Beast Coast movement. They managed to make it look like a typical east coast show with the leaning Statue of Liberty on the ground and the blockade of walls with graffiti on it as a DJ setup. Since there wasn’t any new content that the openers had, all of them performed a multitude of cult classics their older projects from their catalogue, in which their day one Pro Era fans knew.

They also performed a variety of freestyles and verses from the Escape from New York album. On stage, CJ Fly brought a great variety of musical styles, including a Caribbean/Dancehall-rap style for one of his tracks, and he managed to shout out the city of Brampton and the Caribbean community of Toronto, for influencing their culture within the city’s music industry, as well as for the hip-hop culture and so forth. Nyck Caution came through with a vintage Toronto Blue Jays jersey and also congratulated the Toronto Raptors for being the 2019 NBA Finals Champions. Both Kirk Knight and Nyck Caution also performed a variety of tracks together, including a freestyle to South Florida rapper XXXTENTACION’s song Look at Me, and their own tracks, What’s Understood, Knight Time, and much more. The entire Pro Era crew wanted a variety of mosh pits from the fans, and they returned the favor by bringing stellar performing energy for each song and initiating great crowd participation between both them and the fans.

After them, Flatbush (Brooklyn, NY) duo The Underachievers came through to perform astonishing, classic hits including Gold Soul Theory, Herb Shuttles, and much more. The rap duo (AKTHESAVIOR and Issa Gold) wanted that same feeling as the openers wanted for the fans, such as stellar energy, lots of open mosh pits for the kids to move and come close to, and excellent crowd participation. With both of them initiating stellar flows and diversifying their sound with excellent lyrical content, they brought an infusion of psychedelic rap, hard-hitting production, and vibrant samples to make the set unique. With enough charisma, strong cadences, clever wordplay and dope content to provide for the fans, The Underachievers managed to make sure that their set was great.

Once the Underachievers are done, Powers Pleasant, the main DJ for all Beast Coast members played some trending mainstream rap tracks and played some newly released and unreleased cuts for his upcoming project for August 23rd. After Powers Pleasant’s DJ set, an audio recording of the whole Beast Coast movement was played and the DJ came to perform their first track, Left Hand, and all members of the Beast Coast movement came, with all members of Flatbush Zombies (Meechy Darko, Zombie Juice, Erick Arc Elliott) coming first, and Joey Bada$$ performing last on his verse. They all moved and rapped on stage with very hard-hitting lyrics, smooth and intellectual lyricism, great wordplay, stellar energy, and much more.

While others stood on stage, most of the bigger artists stayed on the brick setup of the stage and performed on top from there, to bring that higher level presence for their fans. All members performed a variety of new tracks from their debut collective album while playing each of their songs from their catalogues as well. They were all having fun on stage while remaining to have that strong energy, mind-blowing lyrics, and excellent crowd participation for their fans. Speaking of which, the fans were also going crazy for their rap idols by rapping along to their tracks, vibing and dancing to the beats, raging through the heavy-hitting production, and initiating lots of mosh pits. At the third song, Rubberband, Joey, Meechy, and Zombie Juice were connected on a stage rope with their harnesses as they were all up on the air, rapping to the beat of their track. While other members were waiting to get back on stage, Zombie Juice was smoking a joint and rapping while Meechy and Joey were either flying up in the air or getting down to stand on stage. It brought that sense of them being high as an allusion since their stage movements remind the fans of them being upon a higher level. Fans were vibing to all of the artists and the artists were very happy that they brought it all for their fans during their entire performances. After that, certain members came on certain tracks to rap cult classics, such as Bounce, Paper Trail$, and Christ Conscious, to stuff on Escape from New York, like Distance and Bones. They also managed to close out the show quite well and give fans the show of a lifetime. Beast Coast will continue their North American tour on until August 25th, 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland at MECU Pavilion. You can keep up with the schedule at https://www.joeybadass.com/tour/