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How does a hip-hop artist push beyond the typical performance particulars of two turntables and a microphone? In the case of D.C. rapper Sa-Roc’s appearance at The Get Down this past Friday, the answer was to turn the gig into part spiritual cleansing and part motivational speech.
When the 41-year-old, born Assata Perkins, emerged from the wings, she was carrying a small bundle of burning sage from which she blew smoke toward the audience. And between nearly every song, Sa-Roc laid affirmations at the feet of the worshipful attendees. “The savior of your own self is living inside of you,” she said, introducing the head-nodding title track to her 2016 EP MetaMorpheus. “You belong wherever your steps land.”
Perkins likely needed to hear those messages as much as she needed to impart them. She’s an emotional work-in-progress—a point she drove home on “Options,” from last year’s deluxe edition of her album The Sharecropper’s Daughter. “I wonder now that I have it/Do I really want your attention?” she asks. A startling question that she answers by keeping listeners locked in on her quick turns of phrase and well-earned boasting. At The Get Down last week, she emphasized that song’s lyrical intimacy, crouching down to lock eyes with folks near the lip of the stage and spit bars directly in their faces.
Even as far removed from the action as I was, it had me blushing. Sa-Roc played a lot of the set as expected, stalking from one side of the stage to the next like a boxer sizing up an opponent and beseeching fans to get their hands in the air. But it was her attempts to make a deeper, one-on-one connection with as many people in the crowd as possible that took the set to a different, higher plane.