Jay Electronica Brings Crowd on Stage at North Coast Music Festival

Saturday's North Coast Music Festival performance by Jay Electronica was the most memorable of day with his true hip hop real hip hop rhymes, bringing kids on stage, arguing with security, throwing a liquor bottle to the crowd, letting random fans free style on stage, and so much more!

After battling a bit of controversy with allegedly jumping into the crowd during his Friday Congress Theater North Coast Music Festival pre-show and punching a kid in the face that threw a beer bottle at him, Jay Electronica had some kids in an uproar that he should not even play the festival. Thankfully for Jay Electronica fans, and the Chicago North Coast Music Festival Saturday crowd, he did go on, and managed to bring crowd interaction to a whole new level.

Moments before Jay took the stage, DJTJ Theking came out and placed two bottles of liquor in front of his DJ tables and at 6:30 pm he played a beat with so much bass the crowd in unison cried out, 'Whoa!". Standing in front of a speaker the beat and bass made my entire body vibrate, and almost hard to breath.

Walking out to La Roux's "In for the Kill" the crowd went wild as Jay Electronica immediately started in with one of many talks about he is true hip hop, real hip hop, and not hooks and beats. His performance musically always seemed to be short lived with interruptions of entertaining crowd interactions. During one point he let the crowd know about a $20,000 bet he, DJTJ Theking, and Nas have about if choking women during sex is something they like. The bet had to be settled by December 25th and TJ's stance was only some like it, while Jay's stance was they all do, but in degrees. He then went on to ask the women if they liked being choked during sex, and after the screams and applauds died down, he asked the men if women liked being choked during sex. The overwhelming response from men made it clear that there was far more males than females in the crowd and Jay went on to say, "I guess a lot of women are going to be double teamed tonight! Just kidding..just kidding!"

Frequently during his set, Electronica will have TJ cut the track so he could go a capella or give 'real talk' to the crowd. Posing the question if anyone has seen "Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind" led Electronica into his song "Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)" before once again cutting TJ off so he could ask the crowd another question. This time he asked if anyone had a blunt for him to smoke right then and there. He spotted someone that did and hopped off the high stage down to the barricade, and after taking a puff, he invited the kid (white boy, early twenties) on stage with him.

That one act parlayed into a free for all of madness when Jay invited anyone on stage that could hop the barricade. Kids jumped and scaled to the stage, and a girl even took a head dive trying to leap, but when security finally said enough is enough there was between 40-50 kids on stage with Jay, with the majority being white males. That shows Jay has a cross over fan base of race, and his hip hop music target audience in Chicago has a wide spectrum which not bad for a guy that has yet to release an actual hard copy album.

Starting "Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)" once again, Jay was flawless with his delivery until security started yanking kids off the stage, literally roughly yanking kids off the stage. Jay who was standing stage right, took a while to notice what was going on, but once realizing what security was doing he stopped and said, "Hey! They with me, they with me!" and literally stood in between a large security man and the remaining crowd, arms outstretched so no more kids could be yanked away. Continuing where he left off, Jay was in the face of the security guard spitting out rhymes without missing a beat with one arm outstretched in front of the remaining on stage crowd.

Finishing the song up, the crowd departed the stage and Jay went on to perform another song but this time on a high box meant for camera crews. He then decided to take a leap over the barricade and into the crowd. Jay once again proceeded to not miss a rhyme or beat while performing in the crowd.

Deciding to bring a kid on stage that wanted to freestyle turned into the kid giving shout-outs to deceased hip hop artists, which left Jay and his crew impressed when the skinny young Caucasian boy started naming off less commercial artists that died. The kid was obviously nervous but when he actually got to free-styling it was anything but impressive, and it went on a bit too long. After two more random free-stylers, you would think Jay would of had Black Milk free-style instead of random kids at the festival. At the beginning of his set, Jay brought Black Milk on stage to shine praises on how he is the next big thing, so the least he could of done was let the crowd decide for themselves.

Finishing up his set with ten minutes to spare, it would have been nice to get one more song since all the stage antics left room for little performing. Departing the stage Jay took the full bottle of Jack Daniel's liquor that was in front of DJTJ Theking's turn tables and tossed it out into the crowd. Not only did he toss out an unopened bottle of liquor, but also his hat, sunglasses, and towel.

Yes, Jay Electronica put on a fun, entertaining and memorable performance, but that does not make it the best. It was fun to watch, and the stand out show from Saturday's North Coast Music Festival, but it would have been nice to hear more of Electronica's rhymes and less of the amateur crowd's. If anyone else was there and want to share your experience watching Jay Electronica, feel free to post below! Make sure to check out the slide-show located in this article of the fans jumping on stage, Jay Electronica fighting security off, and him crawling out of the crowd.

*The order of events may vary from this article, and to open slideshow click the picture below.