Live Review: Kanye West, A-Trak, Cool Kids and Kid Sister at the American Natural History Museum [1.25.08]

As if life in New York City wasn’t surreal enough.

The crowd tonight is spilling out the doors of the American Museum of Natural History, to learn about a different kind of science. 80’s Hip-Hop revivalists The Cool Kids along with A-Trak and girlfriend/emcee Kid Sister are set to host a party at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. The center, full of hovering planets and enough glowing exhibits on the universe to make anyone feel small, is thinly populated as The Cool Kids’ DJ spins an early set. Though, by the time Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rocks come onto the stage, the masses are too thick to move through. The Cool Kids strike the right chord, and the crowd moves from what could have been simply museum-goers with beers into an incredibly energetic, off-the-wall crowd. The front row, knowing all of the words to seemingly every song, appears to make everyone behind them comfortable with dancing to an incredibly executed set.





When Kid Sister moves to the stage, the women in the audience go absolutely wild. Reaching down into masses of hands, Kid Sister builds off the energy of the audience and seems to be having more fun than the entire crowd combined. Her timing and charisma are impeccable; albeit relatively new to the scene, she shows an incredible comfort and ease throughout her performance, as if she was simply singing along and dancing wildly to her favorite songs.



Suddenly and shockingly, Kanye West runs from some planet onto the stage, causing an almost indescribable noise to rise from the crowd, overpowering even the music itself. The audience pushes forward falling onto the stage, as Kanye and Kid Sister perform together, Kid Sister eventually falling back with A-Trak to let Kanye execute his fantastic, yet brief, destruction of the stage.



He leaves as abruptly as he arrived, disappearing behind another obscure exhibit; yet, the energy sparked by his performance remains as A-Trak spins for the remainder of the night, perfectly closing an extraordinary set of performances. The Rose Center is immeasurably alive, as people remain dancing up the spiral ramp to the projection of the Big Bang, amongst the tiny replicas of our solar system, and throughout the creation of the universe. A show of otherworldly proportions has reached a gradual and satisfying finish.





Photos and write-up by Elise Largesse for Loose Record
Complete set of photos on Flickr