Logic’s sold out performance at the Music Farm on Friday night featured an impressive assemblage of old and newer songs, along with a performance able to please old and new fans alike.
With the release of Logic’s debut album Under Pressure in October, the Gaithersburg, Md. native was able to take the hip-hop world by storm, proving he was to be taken as seriously as his peers.
After being signed to Def Jam by legendary Chicago producer No I.D. himself, Logic’s first album included songs with newer artists as well as longtime collaborators such as close friend and producer 6ix, a fellow member of Visionary Music Group. Drawing from a variety of influences like Outkast and A Tribe Called Quest as well as his contemporaries like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, Logic was able to deliver a very personal and cohesive debut, just what his fans — and the world — had been waiting for.
Becoming a popular mainstay of the Internet’s burgeoning rap scene, Logic established a strong online presence by dropping several acclaimed mixtapes — particularly those of the Young Sinatra series. Friday’s setlist featured tracks from the latest in the YS series, Welcome to Forever, making it clear that Logic is still in touch with his roots despite signing onto a big label and working with artists like Childish Gambino and Big Sean.
As the crowd chanted his name, Logic confidently emerged from the scene ready as ever, telling the fans of his humble beginnings in the album’s intro, “Soul Food,” before noting it was first time ever in South Carolina. Like a true showman, Logic helped fire up an already hyped crowd — and one that exclaimed “fuck you” every time the rapper would ask if they wanted to go home.
From the machine-gun rhythms of “Gang Related” to the soliloquies of “Growing Pains III,” Logic never slipped up his flow, no matter how fast-paced. The fact that Logic can rap is simply undeniable.
Always one to help ignite the crowd, Logic’s DJ, Rhetorik, asked the audience if they wanted to see Logic freestyle on the spot, setting both the emcee and audience ablaze. Logic responded by spitting an insane verse like it was easy: “[Like] Darth Vader, but I’m a Skywalker; I’m a fly talker.”
The varied setlist of the performance was notably unique, as it gave the crowd deep insight as to Logic’s life. From his nicotine addiction in the clever “Nikki” to his family’s struggles with drugs and crime in the album’s title track, Logic performed each with obvious emotion.
Never afraid of being introspective, Logic regaled to the audience in fantastic measure his trials and tribulations of making it in the music industry with the show’s closer, “Till the End:” “Conversations with No I.D, who made hits with ‘Ye, got hits with Jay/ Now he wanna fuck around and make hits with me/ If it’s meant to be, then it’s meant to be/ It’s been a long time, and this here has been a long rhyme/ So I gotta go, it’s Logic, the one nobody would vouch for/ How’s that shit for an outro?”
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