On the final evening of their three-night, blizzard-blurried Blowout concert marathon last December, members of the Doomtree crew assembled in the offices at First Avenue and looked over the 2011 calendar on club booker Sonia Grover's desk. Like the two feet of snow piled outside, the whole blank week of Dec. 4-10 seemed to glare at them and taunt them from the calendar page.
The fact that 600 or so young fans had just turned up for two of the snowiest nights in Minnesota history -- when buses and even snowplows weren't operating -- was a clear sign that the Doomtree Blowout had blown up into something bigger than its creators had ever imagined.
"When kids are skiing or hitchhiking their way to your show, that says something," said the crew's resident starlet, Dessa, who "blames" Grover for the idea to stretch this year's seventh annual Blowout into a seven-night affair starting Sunday.
The weeklong windup begins with a 7th Street Entry gig hosted by Sims, who had a breakout year following the February release of his sophomore album, "Bad Time Zoo." The group's other four rappers will then helm their own Entry shows through Thursday with a wild mash-up of guests. Finally the entire crew (and just the crew, no one else) will move into the First Ave main room next Friday and Saturday for the standard three-hour, tag-teaming Blowout sets.
First Ave's booker doesn't mind taking the blame for all this: As of mid-week, five of the seven nights were sold out, including next Friday's main-room show, and the rest were very close.
Said Grover, "Not a lot of clubs would give an act a whole week and say, 'Here you go. Do whatever you want.' Obviously, it was a smart move in this case."
This maniacal marathon is fittingly centered around a truly lunatic new Doomtree album, "No Kings," which reached No. 9 on the iTunes hip-hop chart one day last week (a huge week of competing national releases). The 12-track ear-assault of a record has picked up raves everywhere from Pitchfork.com to my old college newspaper, the Daily Texan. (Hey, its 30,000 circulation is bigger than most music blogs.)
Starting with the "Spyhunter"-stalking opening track "No Way" -- in which all the Doomtree rappers save for Dessa take a turn -- the pacing on "No Kings" is breathless, and the approach is at once cohesive and chaotic. On every song it feels as if all of the crew's wordsmiths are fighting to get a word in edgewise -- a style that distinguishes the disc from the previous all-crew record, 2009's more piecemeal "Doomtree."
