On Saturday night, Waka Flocka Flame brought his trap music up to Maine. If there are more than four words in that sentence that looked like nonsense to you, then the concert clearly wasn’t aimed at you, but rest assured: Your kids loved it.

Trap music is a strain of rap and dance music characterized by 808 Roland kick drums and extremely heavy bass. It often is accompanied by dense, minor-key melodies, giving it the effect of sounding simultaneously brooding and triumphant. But make no mistake, this is party music, best experienced in a club or concert where the bass shakes your ribcage and the beats have a gravity-defying bounce that makes a room come alive. In this setting and with a game audience, the result frequently induces euphoria.

This subgenre had been marinating in regional hip-hop throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but didn’t bubble up to the mainstream in a big way until the late 2000s, and Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame had a lot to do with it. His 2010 album “Flockaveli” (recorded when he was just 24) was a major catalyst in this breakthrough, introducing listeners to already-iconic anthems such as “No Hands” and “Grove St. Party,” and making Waka a big enough celebrity among millennials that he sold out the State Theatre in Portland twice in three years.

“Flockaveli” still sounds like a million bucks – the heavy horns of its centerpiece, “Hard in Da Paint,” got the biggest crowd reaction in a night full of big crowd reactions – but the secret to its success may not be its songs, but Waka himself. His gregarious, oversized personality was especially apparent in a live setting, where he held the room in the palm of his hand, pacing the stage, crouching and hopping, shaking his dreadlocks, and chanting lyrics.

The music likely sounded like a bunch of nonsense to those unfamiliar with it, but there is no real mystery. For all the hype, trap is really just another way to play with rhythm and melody. The beats are often spaced apart, and sound as if they’re being whacked around like a tennis ball. This leaves enough open areas for backing-vocal chants to bounce around, creating another layer of intertwining melody. In concert, the music never really paused for breath – for about an hour, it was a continuous stream of highs and lows, gritty melodies and jubilant vocals.

Overall, the performance resembled an EDM show as much as a rap show. Waka was on the microphone quite a lot, but nobody came away raving about his flow or verses. He was instead an emcee in the original sense of the word: a master of ceremonies, or a party host. His night of music included snippets of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” the Motown staple “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and Kendrick Lamar’s “m.A.A.d. city” in addition to a partial cover of DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s inescapable “Turn Down for What.” He also frequently shifted from trap to full-blown house music, blasting throbbing beats that got half of the hands in the crowded pit into the air.

Waka Flocka Flame is also very much a man of the people, greeting everyone with genuine affection and constantly reaching into the crowd to slap high-fives or to pull (often quite young) fans up with him. Once they were on stage, he’d throw his arms over their shoulders, egg on their dance moves, laugh as they clowned to the cheap seats, and gleefully photobomb their selfies. Waka has enjoyed enormous success in part because he writes songs that embody a confident, youthful exuberance, but he’s maintained his celebrity in part because he just seems like a really cool dude.

Robert Ker is a freelance music writer in Portland.


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