Photo Credit: Allen Halas
Three 6 Mafia
“We got hits” was a motif of Tennessee-bred rap legends Three 6 Mafia on Thursday night. To be fair, they aren’t wrong, but it was something that would have been better to show than repeatedly tell the U.S. Cellular Connection Stage crowd on the opening night of Summerfest.
DJ Paul and Juicy J, one-third of the group’s original lineup, hit the stage on Thursday without much buildup, instead focused on giving fans a full hour performance with what would total more than 25 tracks from their extensive lineage. Juicy J donned a Hannibal Lector-style mask and unlocked straight jacket for the majority of the show, although that was offset by a plainclothes DJ Paul, who instead opted for a Prince tribute shirt. The mask and straight jacket would stay on for the majority of the show, and one couldn’t help but at least question if it was a ploy to cover for one of the group’s frontmen to not be able to deliver all of his required verses.
Both members would keep the energy up, moving about the Connection Stage to reach out to fans, and both would often deliver the vocals for each track over each other. The charisma of the duo kept the bleachers full throughout the night, as they would ask the crowd to form mosh pits (a tall order considering Summerfest infrastructure,) comment on wanting marijuana to be legal in Wisconsin, and crowdsource where the best strip club in the city is, so they could visit after the show. There were also brief shoutouts to fallen members of the group Lord Infamous and the recently deceased Gangsta Boo, with not much made of it other than yelling “rest in peace” after playing her track, “Where Dem Dollas At.”
The setlist played like a greatest hits album, and with a lot of material to fit into a tight hour, most of the tracks were truncated in order to make it all work. The front end of the set mostly featured tracks that appeared on the group’s albums, which solidified their presence as southern rap gods near the turn of the millennium. An enthusiastic crowd ate up favorites like “Tear The Club Up” and “Where’s Da Bud,” and in their eyes, Three 6 Mafia could do no wrong.
About halfway through, the set would turn into their most commercially successful material, which was often featured verses on other artists’ songs. That fed well into the format of shortened versions of just about every song, but also posed a problem in that the main artist’s contributions would have to be made up by the crowd. The DJ would cut the vocals off when they wanted the crowd to sing, which was met with a limited response for pop hits like Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.” They rebounded quickly with Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance” but by that point, the Thursday night crowd had begun to thin out slightly. A false finish with their biggest hit as a group, “Stay Fly” was met with a good response, and the duo came back out quickly for a encore rendition of Tear The Club Up Thugs’ “Slob On My Knob” that got the crowd bouncing one last time.
While maintaining their legendary status as a duo over the past several years, there was nothing onstage Thursday night that exceeded expectations from the remaining members of Three 6 Mafia. Frankly, there didn’t need to be. The Summerfest crowd ate up whatever was presented to them, a testament to the career that was built by a larger version of the group in a previous day.
