Chevy2Dope said

 But the excuse of “probably has not practiced Shangi-La in 15 years since it debuted” would be a complete bullshit of an excuse if that was at all true. They planned the performance, advertised it, and knew they had Juggalos from all over coming to see it. You better put in the work to practice the shit out of it, which aside from actual rehearsals could be just a matter of playing it in your car and remembering the lyrics and rapping along to yourself. I don’t buy the no practicing in years thing at all, that’s his fault entirely. All speculation of course. 

You’re not wrong. It’s not like they were caught off guard when the intro to Shangri-La came on. J knew it was coming. However, they both said at the seminar that no amount of practice can really prepare them for what the live show requires. That plus the stresses of that Gathering lingering and that acoustics nightmare of a setup that they had for a mainstage and it should come as no surprise that J fucked up as much as he did. Not saying that none of the blame falls on him but I don’t think all of it does either.

With that in mind, I feel like some of the people complaining about that set have never watched a live Dark Lotus show before. Even with all the fuck ups of the Shangri-La set it was still tighter than the tightest Lotus set. 

Am I the only one that finds it lame that they just rap to a recording of themselves and it’s not just instrumentals? Like they literally just put on the full studio recording and rap over top of it. I hate that, which also makes it lamer that he’d fuck up so much. Is this common for rap shows? I’ve never been to any live rap acts aside from ICP shows.   

There really isn’t a standard for rap shows that I’ve seen. It’s like what Cabracan said. It varies a lot. If there is a common one it would be the beats playing with just the overdubs left in but I’ve seen shows ranging from instrumentals only to whole songs while the artist just hypes up the crowd. Worst example of that was Twista at the Gathering a year or so ago. Dude just played some songs off of some albums while he and, what he called his “hype man”, literally TALKED over the tracks. He would occasionally remember that he was suppose to be doing a show and spit maybe half a verse. It was lazier than the average look-at-the-ground-and-kick-dust-style Juggalo rapper show, which is sayin a lot. 

I think with ICP it makes sense for them to spit over the album. When you go to see ICP, you’re buying a ticket for a spectacle, not a rap show. One of the consequences of that means they have to have the album playing in the background so they can keep up with all of it. If ICP was a band with instruments, their album at a live show is the drummer that keeps them in rhythm. 

Have you ever watched em in a no Faygo venue? It was revealing as fuck to me when I first saw one. When you remove the spectacle aspects and they’re just being rappers onstage it really becomes apparent that they don’t rely on the theatrics to entertain. They just prefer them. Their timing is solid, they know exactly how to feed off of each other as a group and they’re very comfortable with their music.