LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Kassa Overall in Boston, MA (09.09.25)
The Red Room at Café 939 isn’t the kind of place where spectacle takes over. It’s a small, unpretentious room downtown, where the audience sits within breathing distance of the performers. Last night, that intimacy felt almost conspiratorial. At 7:15, people were still trickling in, some casually sitting on the floor, others leaning forward as if they were about to take notes. Most looked like musicians themselves, students and obsessives who came not just to listen but to study.
When Kassa Overall stepped to the kit, smiling in an LA Clippers shirt, he didn’t ease the crowd in he dove straight into his forthcoming album CREAM, which officially releases tomorrow. No samples, no electronics, no overdubs. Just four musicians pushing air, stretching the familiar DNA of hip-hop until it broke open into something unclassifiable. “Big Poppa” arrived as a smoky groove, its swagger intact but refracted through upright bass and piano. “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” swung harder than its source material ever did, Emilio Modeste’s soprano sax spiraling in dizzying lines as if chasing its own tail. On “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me),” Rashaan Carter’s basslines kept the room anchored while Shakoor Hakeem’s percussion scattered sparks across the edges. Pianist Matt Wong, calm at first, leaned further and further into the keys, until the whole band seemed to teeter on a precipice of controlled chaos.
The set’s defining moment came with “Check the Rhime.” What began as a clever nod to A Tribe Called Quest turned into an all-out eruption. Kassa’s drumming grew faster and heavier, Modeste’s horn ripped across the room, and the band collectively slipped the leash. For a few minutes, it was pure combustion—free, relentless, and ecstatic. The crowd, mostly seated just minutes earlier, was shouting, clapping, caught up in the fire. Between songs, Kassa kept the mood light. After three tracks, he finally greeted the room, cracking that most of the audience was “still a twinkle in their parents’ eyes” when these hip-hop landmarks first came out.
Later, while introducing the band, he nearly forgot Carter, his bassist and longtime best friend, who helped him when he first moved to New York. The slip turned into a moment of easy comedy, the kind that only happens among friends who know each other too well. The night closed with a riotous “Back That Azz Up,” reimagined as a frantic jazz burner that threatened to collapse under its own speed. Instead, it lifted the room higher, proving what the rest of the set had already suggested: CREAM isn’t just about paying tribute to hip-hop standards. It’s about tearing them apart and rebuilding them into something both reverent and daring, playful and profound. At Café 939, there was no barrier between audience and band. No lights, no distance, no spectacle. Just four musicians grinning at each other, pushing their instruments to the edge, and reminding everyone in the room that genres are only boundaries if you let them be.
Photos – Kassa Overall (+ band) at Red Room at Cafe 939 in Boston, MA on September 9th:
