Rescued by Music Long Ago, He Sets His Life Story to Hip-Hop ‘A Sucker Emcee,’ a Rhyming Autobiography
Alexis SoloskiSeptember 23, 2014: Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau set to a hip-hop beat, Craig Grant offers his confessions in A Sucker Emcee, produced by the Labyrinth Theater Company. While a D.J. (Rich Medina) bops between two turntables, scratching and spinning, Mr. Grant tells the story of his life in rhymed couplets. Mr. Grant, also known as muMs, has a blocky face with a mobile mouth and gleaming teeth. He speaks in a gentle growl with just a trace of a native Bronx drawl, though he can send his voice swooping up and down the social register. Dressed in Nikes and a T-shirt proclaiming “The Truth,” he spends most of the show near the front of the bare stage, lips pressed close to a microphone. Though he’ll occasionally speak as his mother, his father, a friend or a teacher, he spends most of the piece as simply himself, narrating youthful screw-ups with fondness and exasperation.
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