There was a chance this could’ve been an unbearable thinkpiece about how we chew people up to spit memes out; about how a week’s time is a throwback and six months can go forgotten; about how we’re so dependent on the next hit that we forget about the first ten; how even a current hit can feel irrelevant; about how we go from ignoring someone while alive to making them a trending topic after death; how we turn outsiders to art to caricature to trash; how we shouldn’t treat real-life situations like The Highlander; about how Atlanta isn’t a fetish. Instead, this is a concert review of Migos and Rich the Kid's show at New York’s Irving Plaza. You probably know the Migos. Maybe you listened to “Bando” early on; maybe you found them when Drake swooped down and Versace’d their remix, maybe you saw Vice’s Thomas Morton ask them if “molly” was the same as “Miley Cyrus” as they roamed the kitchen of their country club mini-mansion, holding guns. Even if you don’t, the dab – a dance move credited to them but really created by their former shooter and current show opener Skippa da Flippa – has been desecrated by everyone from Cris Carter to kids at the most recent GOP debate. Oh, and try finding an Atlanta rapper or Complex reader who can put a sentence together without the Migos’ help: “finesse,” “plug,” “juug,” “bando,” “pipe it up,” all them. But life moves pretty fast. If you don’t juug around once in a while, you might miss it. The Migos occupy a very weird place in music's current landscape. They have become Maxim magazine: present but invisible, popular but not cool. (Actually, maybe they’re on the verge of becoming T-Pain, creators of a sound that ends up passing them by.) In the past five months, Migos have culled together 30 million YouTube views— pretty good! But in the same timeframe, Young Thug has a light 150 million, Future has dropped two number-one albums and a mixtape, Kevin Gates sold a gang of albums, Yo Gotti released “Down in the DM,” and even Lil Yachty (who is barely a rapper) is somehow getting buzz. All of this shrinks their space even further.A photo posted by Concert Cornerstore (@concertcornerstore) on Mar 5, 2016 at 12:23pm PST
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