By Geo Gomez

gomezgeo@grinnell.edu

This Friday, Fat Tony and Juiceboxxx are coming to Grinnell to get the Gardner dance floor bumpin’. Both acts focus on rap but utilize different musicality to deliver. This difference in music style influences their flow and deliverance.

Fat Tony, a Nigerian-born rapper who remains mysterious about the origin of his name, has a laid-back style that effortlessly rides the flow of his Southern-Rap influenced beat.

“It follows in the vein of Southern hip-hop, where delivery is slower,” said Pooj Padmaraj ’13, SGA Concerts Chair.

Fat Tony’s raps are hilarious in their relaxed delivery. In the song “Like, Hell Yeah,” after Tony has taken a girl back to his room, he sets up the transition to a group “study session”—“She’s like hell yeah, we like hell yeah, two minutes later having a ménage affair.”

The lines are straightforward enough for their impact to be precise and immediate, while also allowing the audience to catch onto simple hooks that they can chant as they bob to the beat.

Fat Tony comes back to Grinnell after a tremendous response from Grinnell students when he opened for an act last semester. Padmaraj was in close contact with Fat Tony, informing him of the positive response.

“A lot of people wanted him to come back,” Padmaraj said. “It was a demand by the people that the Concerts committee responded to.”

Juiceboxxx’s style is contrasted with Fat Tony’s, relying on quick, electronic influenced beats. He raps quickly off his beat in the manner of the Beastie Boys, with a staccato style that expresses tension in every bar.

“Juiceboxxx draws on the opposite spectrum of rap that relies on really fast and exciting delivery,” Padmaraj said.

In his song Thunder Jam III, Juiceboxxx raps the following lyrics: “Rap rock, I’m so hot. I’m so not ready to just stop.”

The young rapper seems to be Kid Rock reincarnated in a much more endearing and authentic youth, legitimately yearning to perform and deliver good music. The audience will definitely feel his energy as he rockets his lines forward through the frenetic electro beat.

In addition, Juiceboxxx’s new material steps away from his staccato rap delivery in favor of a drone-like voice that floats above the beat and, as the beat drops, forgoes rapping in favor of a beat that urges the listener to jump and shake to the fast-paced garage rock.

“You lookin’ for a reason, you wanna bring it back home, But you got no reason, because you’re all alone,” Juiceboxxx sings in his latest track, with a bit more ominous nostalgia than in his rapping.

The lyrics have much less to do with rapping and don’t feature the measured delivery of rap, but highlight Juiceboxxx’s potential to wail along to a quick beat, his voice suspended like a horizon that lays beyond the ecstatic chorus.

According to Padmaraj, the two acts have previously performed together and get along well. This, along with the skill of both performers, should contribute to their onstage chemistry and have students looking for some Friday night funk hopping up and down the floor.

Fat Tony and Juiceboxx will perform in Gardner this Friday, starting at 9 p.m.