The music’s loud. Unbelievably loud. I didn’t know what to expect and now sitting in a tiny theater a foot away from the stage going partially deaf and yelling out my vocal chords really cemented the whole feeling of “what the nonsense is happening?” But I honestly think that having no idea what to expect made the entire experience that much more powerful. Everything was minimalist from the stage to the man himself, muMs, because, as we’d soon learn, there was no need for any ornamentation.
MuMs walks onstage to some scattered applause. Casually dressed, he begins almost immediately: “Fear is a warning and I’m scared.” Someone from the audience calls out “why?” but muMs ploughs on, reciting his poem, his story. He gives us the setting, introduces his beginning as a “sucker emcee.” We’re captured as an audience, the lights are changing behind muMs almost subtlety; the music matches him. And the hip-hop coming from DJ Rich Medina’s table isn’t the stuff we hear on the radio today, it’s classic stuff, old time hip-hop; the majority of which I was unfamiliar with. (I am proud to say I did recognize Rapper’s Delight immediately, though it was because I had seen it on the “Brian Williams Sings” segment of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.)
MuMs interweaves the genesis of hip-hop with his own childhood in the Bronx. From living through the blackout of 1977 as a kid to going to college at Norfolk State and getting into drugs and back to New York where he began working at a hospital, muMs takes on the rollercoaster that is his life. He reconnects with hop-hop at open mics, his desire to be a rapper taking priority over everything else. When he makes it as an actor, he thinks life is good, but when the show reaches its conclusion, he finds himself in a depression and trying to return to his rhymes.
MuMs doesn’t hold back and gives his all to the performance, sweating almost as soon as he’s onstage. His very personal and detailed accounts of his life are touching. Since he recounts his entire life up to the present, there’s something for everyone to relate to. I personally was most moved by his charge at the end of the performance, telling young people to stay true to themselves and their dreams. “Fear is a warning and I’m scared.” MuMs’ whole life has been overcoming fear, not being debilitated by fear, not allowing a disenfranchised beginning color the rest of his life; bouncing back and soldiering on. DJ Rich Medina said it best during the talk-back, the show was to inspire young men of color in this day and age when it seems the world is against them and showing them another future away from trouble.
The reason this show works is because of its “one-man” way. If there had been other actors playing the parts of muMs’ family, it would have detracted from the performance. If there had been intermission or scene changes, it would have disrupted the art and drawn us out of the world muMs’ created.
Though I had my doubts, A Sucker Emcee has moved and inspired me to keep holding on to my dreams and never let fear cripple me. “Fear is a warning and I’m scared.” Overcome the fear and keep moving.
