The other was T.I., who has matured into a gloriously frenetic performer, vibrating and shaking as much as rapping. He was one of the pair of Atlanta titans who were Powerhouse’s main hip-hop draws. Up until that point, Young Jeezy had been impressive, avuncular and just a touch smug. Only half the crowd was around to see Jay Z join Young Jeezy for the night’s final song, “Seen It All,” five and half hours after the concert started. And, like Summer Jam - and, to be fair, almost all radio station shows - Powerhouse was interminable.
There is a vicious calculus to these shows, reducing the somewhat famous to their 10 or so minutes. And Childish Gambino - the actor-comedian Donald Glover’s nom de hip-hop - played a perplexing set that included his limply catchy “3005,” but also a cover of Usher’s “U Don’t Have to Call” delivered in a shrieking falsetto that probably had all dogs in a mile’s radius howling. The bland Kid Ink did little to remedy his anonymity here, despite his pair of monster hits (“Show Me,” “Main Chick”). (While an announcer said the group would come back at the end of the show, that didn’t happen.) In theory, it was smart to book the Atlanta rappers Migos, among the most promising and dexterous groups in hip-hop, for this show, but they performed first and looked catastrophically bored. There were bigger stars late in the night, to be sure, but it was more exciting to see Tinashe, the molasses-slow R&B singer, showcased on a stage this size. Rather than aim for Summer Jam’s grand scale, it wisely pieced together a lineup heavy with rising talent, artists with one signature hit (or a couple that sound the same) that may or may not fit into the genre’s broader narrative. Musically, though, Powerhouse was on surer ground. She was seen on screen hawking a car dealership four or so times before she herself set foot onstage. Powerhouse took place amid mild tension between the two stations: Just after Summer Jam, Power 105 poached Angie Martinez, Hot 97’s afternoon host and hip-hop’s den mother. Summer Jam is also invested in getting the biggest stars out, often at the price of overlooking the smaller ones right under its nose. But Summer Jam has lately been a victim of its own importance and history: It’s difficult to top the tense, riotous affairs of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when hip-hop was a bigger pop force, and more rooted in New York. Powerhouse has historically been the less crucial of the New York hip-hop radio station shows each year, living in the long shadow of Hot 97’s Summer Jam. And so once the squelchy beat of “Hot Boy” began to kick its way out of the speakers, everyone got to Shmoney dancing, and it was beautiful. There was some perfunctory chest-puffing, a couple of other songs to get out of the way, but he, his crew and the 15,000 or so in attendance all understood they were there for one thing. So it was not a surprise when, about midway through Powerhouse, the annual concert presented by the hip-hop station Power 105 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Thursday night, Bobby Shmurda literally ran onstage, his crew trailing him, and took in the hugeness of the moment. The clip was captioned “#Shmoneydance.” It’s since been watched more than four million times. In it, Bobby Shmurda takes his baseball cap and tosses it in the air - it never lands - and segues into a hard sashay, a tough guy having a great time. In June, someone distilled the video down to its pure essence in the form of a six-second Vine video.
It’s bare-bones hip-hop, full of charismatic menace, street anxiety and just the faintest dash of Caribbean flair. “Hot Boy” (that’s the clean version of the title, anyhow) - began life early this year as a little-watched video in which Bobby Shmurda and his friends - “grimy shooters dressed in G-Star” - ran rowdy on the streets of Brooklyn.
Let’s stop for a moment and think about how remarkable that is. 8 song in the country, according to Billboard. “Hot Boy,” by Bobby Shmurda, is currently the No.