https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/music/2019-10-21/houston-rapper-maxo-kreams-fatigue-couldnt-dampen-excitement-at-emos/

Houston Rapper Maxo Kream's Fatigue Couldn't Dampen Excitement at Emo’s

By Derek Udensi, October 21, 2019, 11:55am, Earache!

Emekwanem Biosah Jr. towers like a rugged anti-hero on albums as he vividly relives his tough formative years. Live at Emo’s on Saturday night, Maxo Kream dissipated into lethargy and frustration.

The rapper took the stage ready to reward a city he claimed as one of his favorites in Texas. “Murda Blocc” didn’t exactly follow suit. The Houston juggernaut seemed unable to rap along to his own verses and eventually asked for his microphone to be turned up presumably so he could hear himself.

Eardrum-pinching vocals briefly followed – as did further sound issues.

A dark minimalism framed the Maxo Kream live aesthetic. Six lights flanked the DJ area and smoke, lots of smoke, filled the stage. By the end of the third song, he admitted to feeling some vocal fatigue from back-to-back shows. He’d performed to a hometown sell-out the night before, but promised to “lose [his] voice” for Austin.

Though a large black curtain split Emo’s into its smaller capacity of roughly 800 people, the nearly full front portion of the venue made more noise than some sold-out shows inside of the Riverside locale. One man even got to dive off stage after locking arms with Kream, who expressed his admiration for Austin’s love of stage diving and crowd surfing.

Tolerance reached a boiling point during “Go,” when the ever transparent storyteller of trap exploits expressed no small amount of frustration with the sound setup of the track’s drop – going so far as blaming “the sound guy” for “ruining the show.” He followed up by leading a gleeful crowd chant of “fuck the sound guy.” A cappella rhyming later on went off without a hitch.

Shame, then, that a rapper who can turn negative attributes into daunting hooks (“Spice Ln.”) and deal lines like a drug kingpin continuously failed to complete more than five words at a time. Maxo Kream’s first signed artist and older brother, KCG Josh (Joshua Biosah), acted as a hype man, providing a spark during an energetic rendition of the duet “Brothers” off Brandon Banks, his sibling’s first major-label album.

Even so, MK songs rich with substance and syllables turned into incessantly empty countdowns of “1... 2... 3!” The demand “hands up” became the most memorable words of the night. A devout following, surely wowed by the Nigerian-American’s adept pen, tirelessly followed along nonetheless and knew every song’s drop.

After nearly an hour of pushing through over 20 tracks at a monotonous pace, Maxo Kream announced his time concluded. He played one more track near the front row of security fencing. Somewhere in the mix, the 29-year-old and his crew unceremoniously exited the scene.

Emo’s set-list, 10.19.19

“Murda Blocc”
“Bissonnet”
“Spice Ln.”
“The Relays”
“She Live”
“8 Figures”
“Change”
“Capeesh”
“Go”
“Big Worm”
“Drizzy Draco”
“Clientele”
“Thirteen”
“Cell Boomin”
“Mars”
“3AM”
“Brothers” (with KCG Josh)
“Grannies”
“Roaches”
“Fetti”
“Meet Again”
“Beyonce”