Del the Funky Homosapien

Ah, Wednesday night. A time for relaxation; the hump day. If you're Charles Mingus, Wednesday night means a prayer meeting. If you were one of the many people showing their faces at Skully's Music Diner yesterday night, you were paying tribute to the pantheon of funk, with Del the Funky Homosapien as prometheus A venerable hip-hop menagerie went on stage from 10:30 until 2:30 last night, and Del was the main attraction but not necessarily the highlight of the show.

My compatriots and I left the apartment around 11:20. We figured that - because there was an enormous list of performers, and we had school the next day - we could show up about an hour late, miss the setup and some people, and still get to see Del. We had to park about a block away because of the sheer amount of people packed into Skully's; quite an enormous crowd. We arrived halfway through Bukue One's set, the second performer of the night.

Bukue One is a multifaceted performer, mixing the lyrical crucial poetics of Saul Williams and Sage Francis with the sex raps of Peaches. His flows were not necessarily the most skillful or the most fresh, but you could tell from his crowd interaction and the near-constant smile on his face that he enjoyed performing. Between songs, he interjected suggestions that hugs are just as - if not more important - than gettin' some after a concert, and that we should all appreciate our mothers' love and kindness. On top of that, he was extremely conscientious of smaller people potentially getting injured in crowds, giving a no-moshing speech near the end of his set.

Mike Relm took the stage after Bukue One, and he almost stole the show from Del. Relm is a mixed-media performer, mashing up videos and pop culture references in his samples with live (pad) drumming and turntablism. His is the only DJ set where I have seen Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name Of" follow Vince Guaraldi's 'Linus and Lucy.' Of course, he worked in crowd favorites like "Paper Planes" and "Thriller," but he also managed to VJ the famous orgasm scenes from "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Office Space." Phenomenal performance; if this guy had been on the mashup scene at the same time as Girl Talk, I posit that he would be the one with the notoriety and Greg Gillis would still be a research chemist.

Then Del. The man we came to see. The prince of funk, doctor of funk-ology, et cetera. Del's ostensible reason for touring would be to promote his new free release "Funk Man (The 13 Point Stimulus Package)," which he often referenced during his performance, playing a few tracks (the single "Get it Right Now" was quite groovin'). A-Plus, supporting act and Del's friend for life, did two songs in the middle of Del's set, which - though fairly good songs - managed to make the energy in the atmosphere level off a bit. Del worked in cuts from his entire career, from Deltron3030's Virus to the Monkees-sampling 'Mistadobalina' to Gorillaz' 'Clint Eastwood,' the closer for the night and most well-recieved by the crowd.

And the crowd itself! Everyone from fratboys and their girlfriends to biker chicks to hippies with dreads down to the middle of their back were all dancing in harmony to the beats and rhymes of Del. The night was a marvelous moment of pop-culture based transcendence that doesn't happen often enough in this city.

Highlights: Bukue One's advice about how to get laid (recite a poem to the ladies about your sexual prowess), Mike Relm's set closer ('Imagine' by John Lennon), Del's 'If You Must.'