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From what I could tell, the question on the minds of the few dozen people who turned up at Subterranean last night to catch the first Chicago appearance by Internet-famous rapper Riff Raff was, “Is Riff Raff actually going to show up?” Speculation about headliners bailing is common at hip-hop shows, but this time there was a bit more contributing to the situation than general rapper flakiness. For one, the show was already running late and less than machine tight—apparently some of the scheduled openers hadn’t shown up, and the “DJ” backing up the string of mediocre frat rappers below Riff Raff on the bill sat onstage playing beats out of iTunes and dicking around with his phone. (At one point he took a call midsong.) When the show’s organizers and hosts got onstage to provide live hype-man duties for the recorded version of Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like,” it seemed intended as much to buy time as to pander to the Chicago audience. (Note to DJs: While Chicago appreciates the implied shout-out when you play “I Don’t Like,” we like it even better when you play the original and not the overcooked Kanye remix.)
