EMERGENCE

Toronto's NOW Magazine reviews the DAM/Invincible show:

DAM and INVINCIBLE at El Mocambo
Rating: NNNN

It’s not every day you hear the Palestinian perspective injected into the hip-hop headspace. But I’ll be damned if DAM didn’t bring the ruckus as hard as any North American ghetto life reporter. But the opening act, freestyle phenomenon Invincible from Detroit, almost stole the show altogether, with lines like “I’m striving to be the best, period / not just the best with breasts and a period!” Her voice forcefully pushed her politics, and her wordplay was tight.

DAM then stormed the stage, rapping in Arabic throughout their electric performance. Though they mixed the occasional mainstream track into their rugged, bass-heavy productions, they mostly stuck to their roots, speaking eloquently about their struggles and passions. They taught the non-Arabic audience members a homeland cultural greeting and weaved their verbal resistance expressions into a few mainstream hip-hop beats, from Touch It by Busta Rhymes to Jay-Z’s Big Pimpin’, to which they welded unapologetically aggressive words. I didn’t understand many of the lyrics, but I certainly felt the vibe and respected the atmosphere of the gathering.