A late-night People Under The Stairs show at The Mid, Chicago

by Scott Wilson

The Mid was a strange place to host a People Under the Stairs show. It was not a bad club, as far as clubs go. It had black lights, two floors, a champagne room, walls painted black to compliment neon signs, smoke, and lights falling from the ceiling. Seemed like a great place to play Laser Tag. And that’s fine, that’s what you expect at a fancy warehouse district club near Oprah’s main condo. It was the kind of place where Drake might hang out with some Google VPs. But the thing is, that’s really not the People Under the Stairs motif.

Thes One and Double K, the two halves of People Under the Stairs, have been hip-hopping and party rocking coast to coast together since 1997. Most of their songs have to do with hanging out, drinking beers, getting high, and riding skateboards around… In their entire eight-album discography (soon to be nine by January) there might not be a single reference to getting bottle service in the club. So, the venue felt a little confused. For reasons unknown they booked a VIP party in the Champagne room behind the stage, so in between songs there would be an un-tiss un-tiss reverberating from the back wall. Distracting for the audience, but Thes One and Double K went on unfazed.

The PUTS weren’t scheduled to come on until around one-thirty in the morning, but before that, there was a strange mix of house music and top-40 remixes done by a tag team of disinterested DJs. At one point a DJ walked away from his machine during a song and left the thing on repeat as if the audience wouldn’t notice when the exact same song came on for a second time. That being said, most people probably didn’t. The single occasion the audience stirred from its ambivalence was when some b-boys started break-dancing while the openers were setting up.

By the time The People came on most of the riff-raff had cleared out, leaving the true fans and a few people too drunk to leave. The set started off fast with a row of bangers from 2009 Carried Away album  -possibly the People’s best- that blended seamlessly into a montage of rowdy classics. They even mixed in a Cypress Hill cover, just for fun. Newer fans might have been disappointed that the latest album, Highlighter, got neglected but when the set ended to San Francisco Knights –the P’s most popular single to date- more than a few lighters shot up from the crowd, fire code be damned.

Despite the late hour and level of drunkenness, the audience jumped along with every beat and responded to every call. On stage Double K handled DJ duty on his analog turntables and music machines in addition to MCing duties, the mark of a true pro. Thes One pumped up the audience by cleverly mixing up his rhymes to include a few references to Chicago, delivered in his witty 300-words-per-minute style.  Even though the PA at The Mid sounded a wee bit off, as if their system might not have been set up for vocals, the lyrics came through by Thes One and Double K’s expressions. A few words might have been garbled, especially with the competing noise from the VIP party, but they rapped with such force the words made it to the ears by conviction.

The set ended at 3 A.M., just in time for the last call, though too late for an encore. The VIP party bumped away; now free to infect the whole club, unencumbered by competition from the stage. The PUTS fans made their way to their bikes and the club regulars headed for the line of taxis dotted along Halstead Bridge, both in good spirits. By the closing time the Mid satisfied all groups willing to stick it out to the end.