redveil @ Paradise Rock Club 2/25
Photography by Jack Schwed
Review by Kainat Deo
On an unassuming Wednesday evening, dedicated show-goers filed into Paradise Rock Club, bodies suffused in stage light, packing together shoulder-to-shoulder. Abuzz with soft chatter, fans prepared to welcome Marcus Morton, who goes by the stage name redveil, back to Boston for the second time.
In April 2023, as a part of his first official tour, “water 2 fire,” redveil delivered a sold-out performance at the aforementioned venue. Throughout his set Wednesday night, the soul-sampling rapper conversed with the audience in a familiar and light-hearted manner, oftentimes encouraging the crowd to “beat the last time I was here.”
Berklee student Louis De Schouwer and 17-year-old Orlando-based Chenayder delivered opening performances marked by a jazzy, spirited, and contemporary indie sound. With an energy for the night established, fans primed and anticipatory, redveil emerged from behind the curtains and began his unwavering hour-and-a-half performance.
The show began with “time (a dream deferred),” the first track from redveil’s latest release, “sankofa.” Opening with the ticking of a clock, a wide-eyed and serious-faced redveil emphatically delivering verses that can be argued as nothing short of poetry.
In a behind-the-scenes video detailing the process behind the album, released last December, the rapper aspirationally expressed that the album is intended to reflect “the quality of the artist that he is. This is what he will be.”
Throughout the evening, redveil subliminally encouraged audience members to engage with his performance on levels beyond mere listening comprehension. Forehead creased with focus, eyes shut in reflection, lips joyfully curved upward, brows furrowed with grit; his facial expressions served as windows into the emotional element of his music. “All of my albums are like diary entries, things I’m thinking about,” the artist has said.
After delivering a connected series of songs from “sankofa,” redveil transitioned to his 2023 single “black enuff,” featuring a verse from rapper JPEGMAFIA, which redveil covered. Sonically experimental, the entirely self-produced track is busy with heavily distorted guitar samples and aggressive 808s, unapologetically original and authentic. The song’s lyrics speak to the rappers’ identity-related experiences, powerfully rejecting whiteness and proudly embracing Blackness: “Who told that black boy had to hate himself? / Who told my sister she ain’t worth a cent? / Grin on my face from watchin’ crackers melt.”
To show-goers’ explosively expressed surprise, redveil also performed “Kingdom Hearts Key,” from JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown’s 2023 collaborative album “SCARING THE HOES.”
Softening the ambiance, redveil took a moment to express his gratitude towards his fans, saying “I get to share my experiences and emotions with y’all, and you receive them. You get to see yourselves in them. For a second, we both get to feel as though we are seen and that we are not alone. I am so thankful for you all, you save my life every day.”
After this intimate moment, redveil jumped back into his discography with “morphine (da ways)” from his 2022 release, “learn 2 swim.” Representative of his artistic diversity, the song features a coke rap-adjacent flow: raw, reflective, and ruminative. He proudly led the audience through a resounding chant of the song’s final lines, “please don’t let me down, please don’t let me down, please don’t let me down.”
Moving into the final moments of his show, redveil impassioned the audience to come together in co-creating the acme of concert experiences. Upon the performance of “history,” the third track from “sankofa,” the walls of Paradise Rock Club seemed to compress. The air became thick with love and musical immersion, as redveil and his fans jointly sang the track’s background vocals: “oh-oh-oh-ahhhhh, we made history from the start…” before he disappeared from the stage. Fans’ energetic requests for an encore were met with a heartfelt piano solo that appeared to be built into the setlist, the entire venue breathing as one in unified attention.
As the evening came to a close, redveil gave fans the opportunity to purchase copies of “sankofa” and take photos during a meet-and-greet. With back-to-back tour stops until April and an ensuing summer tour as the opener for Freddie Gibbs, the young rapper is sure to remain busy in the world of music. His performance Wednesday night has certainly solidified Boston as an eager and welcoming stop that will undoubtedly remain so into the future.
