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created by Jerome Sable & Eli Batalion

Sable & Batalion, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

May 11-22, 2005

The two MCs, Jerome Sable (formerly “Saibil”) and Eli Batalion, who brought us Job: The Hip-Hop Musical are back with Hip-Hop 4 Dummeez.  It’s a hilarious 30-minute skit unfortunately stretched out to 70 minutes.  Worse, the show seems to be nothing more than a live infomercial hyping their first album under their alias as the Grafenberg All-Stars called G Marks the Spot, for sale from the stage.

The show takes the form of Sable and Batalion, as themselves, supposedly showing us an eductional two-disc DVD called Hip-Hop 4 Dummeez, in which two nerdy rappers named Bushman (Sable) and VowelMovement (Batalion) use a PowerPoint presentation to explain hip-hop in five easy lessons.  The first “disc” is very funny sending up everything from hip-hop pronunciation and rhyming to bling-bling, hoopties and when to call women “bitch” or  “ho.”  This also includes “deleted scenes” like Sable mock-seriously freestyling a poem about freestyling.  In contrast, the second “disc” about how Bushman and VowelMovement formed the Grafenberg All-Stars needs work and goes nowhere fast.

Disappointingly, there’s too much hit-and-miss chatter and only snippets of the highly clever hip-hop they’re still so good at.  If you want a full-length song, you’ll have to buy the album. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-05-19.

Photo: Jerome Sable and Eli Batalion. ©2005 gettyimages.