“Yo yo yo, all you sucker Emcees ain’t got nothin’ on me…” All Kevin Gnapoor and Mean Girls references aside, muMs certainly isn’t a sucker emcee. In fact, he’s a rather spectacular one.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you. When the performance first started and I realized the premise of the play, I wasn’t too happy. It seemed like it was just going to be another story about a young black guy’s dream of being a rapper. I internally sighed and prepared myself to hear another tale about someone’s come-up, or their struggle to become recognized at least. But NO, this performance took both my original expectations and my lowered expectations, threw them out the window, and blew me away!

First and foremost, this performance had a very remininscent vibe. Between the staged flashbacks and me making my own personal connections, it felt very relatable. It reminded me of so much from my life, both past and present. I think the part I related to most was muMs’ mother having plastic on the couches. You really don’t quite understand that struggle unless you’ve experienced it for yourself (try sitting on a plastic covered couch in shorts on one of the hottest days of summer, then we can talk!). But on a more serious note, it really did make me remember a lot of things from my childhood. From the break dance scene in the Proud Family Movie set to Looking for the Perfect Beat by Afrika Bambaataa to Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight! In my house, these were staples in my young years, back when I had no choice in what I listened to, seeing as to how my dad pretty much ran the radio in our house, but I’m not complaining because it’s a fun soundtrack to have for my juvenile years. I can’t even deny the fact that I was dancing in my chair! I was really excited that I could understand the references made in the performance, considering my age. The music was old school Hip-Hop: Run-DMC, Diddy’s music from back when he went by Puff Daddy, basically, the classics. There was even one instrumental song played that irked me so much, because I couldn’t quite figure out what the name of it was; never have I been more satisfied than when I recognized it to be “Do It (‘Til You’re Satisfied)” by BT Express (Yes, pun WAS intended). On an even more severe note, I can relate to muMs’ mother having Alzheimer’s disease. My grandmother suffers from the disease, and it is especially hard on her caretaker, her husband, my grandfather. Seeing muM’s sadness about that particular part of his life really hit home for me and made me feel for my grandfather even more.

I think my favorite part of the performance was that it reminded me why I don’t really listen to the rap music made nowadays. I mean, think about it: what are today’s Hip-Hop hits? “Black Widow” by Iggy Azalea featuring Rita Ora, Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda”, “Hot N***a” by Bobby Schmurda. What are these songs even about?!?!??? I’m not going to deny the fact that when Anaconda comes on my iPod I get excited and walk down the street like I’m Tyra Banks on a runway, but what is the subject matter of these songs? Or any songs of today’s generation? Sex, drugs, money, crime? Basically. The Hip-Hop/Rap music classics are about just having a good time and being happy. Listen to “La Di Da Di” by Slick Rick & Doug E Fresh. Try to tell me it doesn’t make you feel good! The whole premise of the song is partying and having fun.

Or how about the song that the performance was titled from? Run-DMC’S “Sucker MC’s”. A real rap classic. The whole song is pretty much just about a regular day that turns into a rap battle. Run-DMC is literally rapping about rapping! Not degrading women, not talking about sex. Times were different then, simpler. “Youse a sucker MC, and you’re my fan … You’re just a sucker MC you sad face clown (Run-DMC. “Sucker MC’s.” Simmons, Smith, 1983. Mp3)”. Let’s go back to those days of Hip-Hop. This performance would appeal to anyone who appreciates the old-school Hip-Hop jams, or anyone who wants to hear a reminiscent story told through music.

Once I got over my initial distaste about the storyline of the performance, everything about the play worked for me. The performance was intriguing and used music to set a time period in a way that was appealing and made me want to bust a move.

Can we ditch today’s rap music and just go back to this? In the words of Montell Jordan, “Let’s flip the track, bring the old school back. (Montell Jordan. This Is How We Do It. “This Is How We Do It”. Jordan, Pierce, 1994. Mp3)”

muMs the word, and he knows what the people want.

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.

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.

I have only been to two plays in my life: A Junie B. Jones Musical, and Teach, Teacher, Teachest. After not really liking any of those two plays, I was pretty skeptical about liking the one that my class was going to go to on Wednesday, A Sucker Emcee. Even the title was odd to me, but I went to go see it anyways.

I met up with my professor, as well as a bunch of people from my Arts In NYC class, and we went to a questionable looking American restaurant that was only a few blocks from the theater. I was hungry out of my mind because that morning, I only had a bit of oatmeal. I was up for eating anything at this point…or was I? I was ecstatic when I looked at their menu and they served Chicken Parmesan, and I knew I was going to get that. However, my anxiousness to eat in that place was quickly put to a stop once I heard one of the girls from my class screaming in terror. Everyone looked at her and saw her panting, her eyes filled with tears, and droplets of sweat trickling down her face. She said that there had been a huge cockroach on her arm, and so she yanked her arm so hard that the roach fell to the floor of the restaurant. And to make matters worse, a boy from our group noticed another cockroach in the restaurant that made its way into the REFRIDGERATOR! And at that point, I just thought to myself: Oh hell no I’m not eating here! We immediately dropped our menus and scurried out that restaurant in pursuit of a more sanitary place, which we did find (YAY)! ***By the way, you might be wondering why I told you this anecdote, but I have my reason, I promise, which you shall understand soon.

We finally got to the theater and hogged all of the front row seats. The stage had a DJ playing hip-hop music and a brick wall background with colorful dim lights. When the play commenced, I later found out that it was a one-man show, which was perfect because that simple, yet creative, background really enabled the audience to fully attend to the speaker, Mums. Mums was amazing! Not only did he memorize over 90 minutes of dialogue, but he also put so much power into his words, which he rapped (and it rhymed)! He made his audience laugh, and want to cry all at the same time. He engaged his audience by making them a part of the play by often telling them to scream with him.

Mums revealed to the audience his struggles in life in the Bronx and how the only thing that would always come in his way was fear, hence the reason he was once called a Sucker Emcee. All his life he wanted to be a rapper, but fear was something that stood in the way of that. For example, when he was in grade school, a boy named Dallas challenged him to a rap battle, but Mums did horribly because he was scared. Another one of his fears was disappointing his mother, who he aspired to be like. His mom was the only person in her family to go to college and get a masters degree. She kept on underscoring the importance of Mums also going to college and becoming somebody. But Mums discovered that college wasn’t for him. Instead, he formed a rap duo called “Uncontrolled Substance”. He presented a song that the duo wrote called “Super Cucaracha”, and that was when our whole class bursted into laughter. What are the odds that Mums would rap about hating cockroaches in motels when we just experienced these same creatures in a restaurant less than an hour ago!

Mums rapped for a while, and even though he wasn’t bad, when given the opportunity, he switched to acting because that is what gave him money. He soon realized, however, that acting wasn’t for him. And this brings up the prevailing theme in the play: Mums’ search for identity. Was college for him? Was acting for him? Or was it being an Emcee? Mums ultimately realized that he was born to be an Emcee. Today, Mums is 46 years old and is STILL a rapper, and stated that he will always be one. The whole purpose of the play was Mums trying to explain and justify how he got to rapping on this stage in front of a crowd of people. His beautiful rhetoric and poetic diction were truly inspirational to the audience.

Of all the things that Mums rapped about, one thing in particular touched me. It was his mother. This once “successful and strong figure” in his family quickly became weakened by Alzheimer’s disease. Mums told the audience that that morning, she raised a knife at him, her own son! When I saw how hurt Mums was when describing that scene, I automatically thought to myself: either this guy is an amazing actor or he’s telling us a story that actually happened to him. And as it turns out, everything that Mums rapped about was true. However, the part when he said his mom raised a knife at him actually transpired a while ago. His mother is now in a nursing home and is doing much better. But all of this just makes me respect Mums even more as an actor. He has to constantly refer to that awful episode with his mother when he raps to his audiences, and yet he still hasn’t become desensitized to that incident; each time he recites it, he feels the pain. And to me, that’s not acting; that’s showing that you are human, and that’s why I have great respect for Mums.

A Sucker Emcee was the first performance that i have seen in this style; I am glad to say it was a delight. I entered curiously and came out fascinated.It started off with 3o minutes of hip hop music, some of which i recognized others that i did not. The stage looked like something you would see at a stand up comedy act. The wall behind the stage was a brick wall decorated with a lot of fancy lighting equipment. The program interestingly said it was a one man show that included a Dj. I didn’t know what to expect and quiet frankly i sat down with a negative attitude due to the hour, however a couple of minutes into the show, it went away.

The show started out with a casually dressed Craig, a.k.a. muMs, an actor and playwright. There were no props and no changes of scenery; all that decorated the stage was the changing of lights, Dj Rich Medina and the actor. He began his performance rather quickly and his prologue, his poem about fear, was a little difficult to understand at first. I hadn’t realized that the idea of fear was supposed to be the prologue until after the show. However it smoothly led way into his narrative. MuMs told the story of his life but his acting and emotional detachment from the script made it seem otherwise. And that was the beauty of it. He told us how he was introduced to rap and hip hop, his childhood, college life and his present. He told his narrative through first and 3rd perspective, almost as if he was telling us about someone else’s life. After the show as muMs was describing his process and thought process it was interesting to see that he seemed like an entirely different person than his actor self. While he was performing, he was powerful and wholeheartedly explained every detail, as opposed to his “blandness” after words.

My favorite performer was actually Rich Medina. He and muMs had such great connection, but i was actually enamored with Rich’s facial expressions. His love for his work was definitely seen through his music and liveliness. I enjoyed the fact that Rich laughed, participated agreed and enjoyed the performance as if it was his first time watching. I’m sure that muMs would have been powerful without rich but the Dj added something special to the performance. what i enjoyed was that it was not your modern day music (thank goodness), some pieces were classics and others  weren’t even hip hop. Everyone was tapping or nodding along.

Every community could have appealed to this performance. Even if hip hop isn’t the normal for each individual. The principle of overcoming fear and having the courage to follow your life and dream applies to all. It doesn’t mater where you come from, life exists when people choose to follow passion.