"This is my third show today," a visibly exhausted Juiceboxxx announced before his nighttime performance at the showcase for IHEARTCOMIX, a loose collective of performers with a shared enthusiasm for (but very different ways of performing) party music. "I want to puke, I want to kill myself... my body hurts."
While most of his IHEARTCOMIX peers keep their music willfully chipper, the mercurial Milwaukee rapper brings an edgy, angry undercurrent to his shows, shouting at his audiences, shooting them the stink eye and in general messing with them. His show bordered on performance art. Between threatening to quit music ("this is my last song ever," he said toward night's end) and musing on growing up ("I'm not 16 anymore, I'm 22," he said as he rocked back and forth on the crowd, "what does it all mean?), he swung from the stage and crawled into the lap of a seated, unamused SXSW stage hand, ending the set a sweaty mess.
"Could you smell him?" asked one woman, genuinely amazed.
"I could!" beamed the guy next to her.
"Now that was B.O.," she said.
