What a sight to see, “A Sucker Emcee.” Craig ‘muMs’ Grant takes the audience on an emotional roller coaster full of his personal experiences and overwhelming circumstances and personal obstacles of growing up in the Bronx. It is amazing too see what only a microphone allows one to do, to connect with people and tell a story, with a little help from background lights and music. Despite the fact the ‘muMs’ struggled to become an emcee, he definitely fulfilled his lifelong dream in this captivating experience.
Personally, I had doubts about this performance, doubts that this way of expressing oneself was art. I thought it was just talking. How effective could talking just be? I associated anything with only talking with rap, the “music” of gangsters, of Lil Wayne, Drake, Chris Brown. I thought to myself whenever I heard rap music on the radio, how could anyone in his right mind like this type of music? Every other word is a derogatory term; I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that this was music, an art form. Oh boy, was I wrong. MuMs’ put everything he had into this performance, He literally had to wipe the sweat off his face and drink water every five minutes. I could see hard work and a great deal of effort that went into this performance.
MuMs captured the true essence of hip-hop. Hip-hop started out as poetry, as young people wanting to express themselves. They wanted to do it just to do it. MuMs delivers a clear separation between real hip-hop and the glorified rap stars of this age of music. Since he emphasizes this difference, many more people will find a meaning in his performance if they know he is not on the same level as the degrading rappers who call them musicians.
MuMs’ whole life in a nutshell is put before the audience so that the audience can feel the hardships and struggles muMs endured in his life. He takes the audience through the life of a young Bronx boy just trying to find a meaning in his life. He is plagued by the loss of his father from diabetes when he is 19, and the heartbreak of his mother falling victim to Alzheimer’s disease and one day holding a knife up to him. MuMs delivers his performance with so much emotion. There are so many things that anyone can relate to in his life’s story, giving his performance a much more profound message that grabs peoples’ hearts. Anyone from any community can relate to muMs’ story, appealing to a wide variety of people, making the performance that much more powerful.
I had so many doubts going into the performance: whether a one man show was going to be entertaining and thought-provoking, whether this was going to be just another stereotypical rap performances which I despised, or whether I would be simply bored. The exact opposite occurred, and even at one point I started tearing because I found myself able to relate to an aspect of muMs’ life. My definition of art was significantly expanded after seeing this hard-hitting performance. I have total respect now for true hip-hop, the art of delivering a message, of expressing one’s feelings. We all have experiences in which we are skeptical in going somewhere. However, we end of loving the performance or the people we meet during the experience. This is one of those examples. I definitely did not see any sucker emcee.
