Saturday, April 23, 2011

Zekeish's review of ABDC6's Black Eyed Peas Challenge

Now for my grading scale, I’m not a big numbers fan, so I have decided to do this review with words serving as my ratings. My scale is as follows:
OH MY TITS= A perfect performance. Their transitions were on point, their choreography was squeaky clean, they had wow moments that made you want to disrespect the nearest replay button. Basically the performance that makes a season
FANTABULOUS =Close to a perfect performance. There was just one thing that kept them from being perfection incarnated.
FREAK A LEAK= A great performance. Definitely an eye catcher, but had some problems with some aspects of their performance
GOODISH= good performance. Had some noticeable problems but still had an overall solid performance that has rewatchability
MEH= An okay performance, nothing outside the ordinary. Had some glaring problems or provided no real wow factor.
INCREDIBLY MEDIOCRE= A very average performance. Worse than okay, but good enough to where I could sit through the performance, Barely
WELL, THAT SUCKED= A less than average performance, nothing really went right here. Had some concepts that could have been executed better, but nothing really made you like the performance. You wanted to find the nearest dark place and hide there until the performance is over
ID RATHER WATCH A JUSTIN BIEBER CONCERT= A horrible performance. You’d rather be subjected to Bieber and thousands of 11 year old girls screaming in your ear… Shame
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ICONIC BOYZ- Now you may or may not know this, but ICONic Boyz didn’t impress me last week.  I thought their performance was relying on the fact they were young, and their highlight was some painted-on abs. I was really interested to see if they could break out of that mold and give a really good performance since they did have my favorite song of the night. What they gave was even worse than last week. Honestly. At least last week they were somewhat clean, and gave some interesting transitions, this week it was beyond bad. They started off interesting, with that Michael Jackson-like lean, and I was like “OMG, THIS could be GOOOD” . Boy (yes, pun intended) was I wrong. Their transitions were lackluster at best, they weren’t clean at all, they did their task but it wasn’t very creative or well framed and on top of all of that, they re-used the same line they did last week (the line I’m referring to would be the line last week where the “abs” part took place). Not to mention they stayed in the same part of the stage the WHOLE performance and gave incredibly basic choreography. Saying “awwww, they are soo cute” doesn’t cut it anymore. They were chosen over much better crews to be here, and voted (because of their age) into the one of the top spots over more talented crews on the show. I honestly could not believe what I was hearing from the judges either. JC wants to critique IaMmE on not moving much, but ICONic Boyz stayed in the same spot and he says nothing. Dtrix says “they're cute” and Lil Mama now thinks she’s the voice of the young people. I mean honestly, what drugs are these people doing? I could see Lil Mama just inhaling some acid-laced cheeseburgers and LSD sugar cubes before she walks out on stage and reviews the performances. That would be the only way her critique on this crew would make sense. I mean, if she's the voice of the young people, then I must be god king of the unicorns in fairy hood-heaven. Hence the rating… I DUB THEE… ID RATHER WATCH A JUSTIN BIEBER CONCERT

PHUNK PHENOMENON- Definitely a crew I think people are sleeping on. When they were announced as being one of the top crews in votes, it made me cackle with joy. They gave a great performance last week and an even better one this week. The song they were given wasn’t the best of songs, but they came out with their high energy and versatility. They opened up with some very hard hitting choreography and got me pumped. At this point I said to myself “okay… okay. I DIG” then Bebo did the ½ flair to reverse ½ flair. That blew my mind. Then they slowed it down with Bebo doing a freeze in the middle. That blew my mind. Right after the slow motion section they got right back in to their hype and heavy hitting choreography. Everything was on point, framed well and it was clean. Luckily I was in a hospital when I watched their performance because my brain opened up the side of my head, said “THAT WAS TOO MUCH TO HANDLE” , plopped down and sprinted down the hall screaming at the top of its non-existent lungs. That’s how incredible this performance was. There isn’t much to say about this performance besides every part of it was amazing. It left me speechless honestly. I wished I had seen it live. I think you all can guess the rating of this performance. OH MY TITS!!!!!!!!!


IaMmE- I couldn’t wait for this performance, especially because it’s been two weeks since they have performed.  They opened up with a very unique formation, and it looked like a factory of some sort. I was like, that was cool, but that better not be the end of it. AND IT WASSNNNTTT! At the end they gave us a robotic formation where they transformed into a walking/ticking piece of whatever they are. That was crazy creative and I have to say, probably the best moving robot ABDC has seen. It was definitely better than the Boogie Bots robot and  it was also better than the JabbaWockeeZ robot on the Champions for Charity Show. Also, the faces they made during that robot was like they were saying “Yeah, we know we sick” and I loved seeing their confidence. The choreography in the middle was good, it wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it. The only problem was it seemed a little devoid of energy at some points in there. I liked the little waving solo given by Pacman. That was a very nice addition to the already great performance. I am definitely looking forward to what they can accomplish next week, I know their visuals will be stunning, but I want to see what other wow moments they can come up with without brain banging. This crew better watch out though, because phunk phenomenon has taken over the top spot right now. Anyway I DUB THEE...FANTABULOUS  

STREET KINGDOM-  I enjoy krump, especially because I partake in that style of dance, but this performance was very disappointing. I understand they wanted to try more choreography, but the choreo was not very good or energetic. Seeing how much energy this crew normally has, it was very disappointing to see them get lost in their own choreography. I wanted them to keep to their freestyles and keep it BUCK. While they tried, I don’t feel like they did it at all. I feel their lackluster choreography really held their performance back from what it could have been. One of the formations with the light sabers was very neat to see. When they got together and put the sabers together to create what looked like a person , then the middle guy started twirling the saber in the middle which gave it that “final touch”. That was probably the highlight of the performance. Unfortunately they let the song slow them down, and even with the nice visuals with the light sabers, I still feel as if they could have done a lot more with it. I was sitting back watching the performance like “GET BUCK ALREADY!” but no such thing occurred. They have to bring it more next week. (and seriously, D-trix, you need to get off Tight Eyez' nuts. He can take criticism, give him some). I DUB WUB….  MEH

787 CREW- A crew recently dubbed “Status que” came back this week determined to give us the tricks they so heavily depend on. When I heard their challenge was teleporting, I started to think of ways they could do the teleporting while still keeping their style. I really couldn’t think of much. Needless to say I was a little skeptical about how much diversity they could give us. While they didn’t give us much diversity, they definitely surprised me. They gave better choreography this week, and their tricks (like always) were good. Nothing really stood out about the performance except for the teleporting part. WHICH WAS WELL DONE,  mucho gusto senors . I liked the opening trick (which was actually featured in their video package last week) where one of the guys jumped back and before his head hit the other man caught his arms and popped him right back up. Another good trick was the back handsprings to the front flips in which two members did back tucks while two members caught their feet right before they landed, then right after two more members’ front flipped right over them. Unfortunately the front tucks were a little off, but still a good trick. The glow in the dark section directly after the teleporting trick was not executed well at all and could have been a lot better, and I felt 787 got lost in the song a little bit. They hit all the basic beats with their choreography and I feel they can give more. We all know that 787 crew has all the tricks, and while it’s good to have tricks, it is really dangerous to rely on them. Especially tricks I’m sure we have all seen before. Even though they clearly improved since last week, they still need to give us more. THEESSS CREEWW GETS...GOODISH  

INSTANT NOODLES- After getting verbally mind raped by Dtrix’s comments last week, I expected Instant Noodles to come out with a purpose and wreck whatever challenge BEP handed to them. They easily got the worst song (for their style) of the night, and received the vaguest challenge as well. “do a video game thingy in your performance…” my face was like (0.o)? No specifics, no “we want you to do this type of video game” or “you need to make it look like this certain game”, it was just like… “make a video game on stage, don’t suck”. The way they executed their challenge was very well done. It was very creative and paid tribute to retro style video games. I must admit, I was very worried about where the performance was going to go after the first 3 seconds of it, it didn’t look promising. But when my man started the booty shaking (and proved not all Asians have A.B.D.), it picked up nicely. They started going into their perfected bboy floorwork and gave some nice visuals. The freeze to the coin sound in the music was on point as well as when they did the punching sequence to “COMBO” and quickly high fived each other to “NICE”. Those moments weren’t really wow moments but I really liked the added creativity in the performance. Ya know? Focusing on the little things, I DIG. Anyway, let’s get to the highlight of the performance which was 5 members of Instant Noodles crawling across the floor in a unique way that provided a visual of the classic super Mario turtles. Of course, one of the members was the main character of the game and went the opposite way of his other crewmates. This gave the illusion of a classic side scroll video game, perfect for what they were trying to accomplish. I also enjoyed another highlight moment in which (near the end of the performance) they all got into a diamond formation and each one of them progressed until the last one in the line completed the freeze. That was very well executed. The creativity of this crew really tickles my fap gaggle each time I’ve seen them perform. Definitely boosted themselves up in the standings this week. (AND BTW, they weren’t bottom two.. nahamahamahanahan haa) … FREAK A LEAK
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BOTTOM TWO: hese crews should not have been in the bottom two at all. The real bottom two crews out of all eight from the first two shows were 787 and ICONic boyz. But because of the Bieber-ish fan base of ICONic Boyz and America’s goo goo eyes for lots of tricks, They weren’t.  But, in normal ABDC fashion, gimmick crews (IB) last longer than a week. It’s quite sad,

FOOTWORKINGZ- Definitely the best crew out of the Ke$ha Challenge Week, so I was very disappointed to see them in the bottom two. The started out like I thought they would. High energy, good footwork and clean, they also gave us a little taste of the floating illusion and a flip subsequently following that, a very nice way to start out their performance. The Kingz (with a queen) then get into their forte, and that is the footwork. They actually gave us a new style of footworking that incorporated a little bit of hype in it as well. The best part about that section was that it was still perfectly clean even with the jumping up and down. So right at the beginning they show us versatility. They then started to do some framing and formation changes until they got to their levitation/floating challenge. Unfortunately, you could easily tell what they were about to do, and even though the illusion looked cool, the camera angle switched to the woman’s face instead of showing the rest of the move, which took away from the move as a whole. They then jumped right back into another footwork section and got to the surprise highlight of the performance, which was three members of the Kingz (including the queen) doing a variation of a hip slide up to the front of the stage, and then leaning back and slowly going down when the song said “shut it down”. That was very clever and mos definitely a highlight. They then started doing footwork again, this time with three members doing the same movements on the floor in front of those that were standing.  The ending  of their performance was lackluster. The music sped up, but their feet didn’t, and their energy level went down actually. The ending pose was sloppy and not a very good finish to an otherwise great routine. LONG LIVE THE QUEEN...GOODISH

REQUEST- I somehow knew they were going to be in the bottom two. I didn’t think people would dig their hard hitting/angry face/warrior style. I was right and unfortunately it sent the second of two crews that didn’t deserve to be in the bottom, to the bottom. Anyway, when I heard their challenge was to “clone” themselves I immediately thought of their plastic freaks youtube video and remembered how well they seemed to act like clones in that video. Well, sure enough, they came out with that video’s same vibe and practically the same costumes. Of course they killed the challenge dead. Like murder, shot to the head, dead. I felt sorry for FootworKINGz, because as soon as Request starting cloning themselves in the beginning of the performance I was like “daumn, FWK is SCREWED”. Request started out with three girls standing in the back-middle of the stage, three girls on the right hand side of the stage, and two girls laying down on the left hand side. They started out with a bit of a solo from one girl (who killed it) and immediately got in to their challenge of cloning. The illusions were very good and it enticed you to want to watch the beginning over and over again (which I did). After this cloning session they gave us hard hitting clean choreography, which included very well done chest pops, as well as some nice chain reaction choreography. Overall, definitely a great performance, Request finally stepped up to the level I knew they had. Last week was weak for them, this week was awesome and a half. I DIG request, I dig. I still am waiting for that lean back move they all did at HHI. I know it would be a repeat move, but on the ABDC stage. Ooooohjhhhhh *orgasm* I REQUEST A SCORE OF...FANTABULOUS  

 
OH MY TITS MOMENTS-
1.    Phunk’s whole performance
2.    I.aM.mE’s beginning & ending robots
3.    Instant noodles Chain reaction freeze & Video game illusion
4.    Footworkings “shut it down”
5.    Request’s cloning beginning
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Since every crew has performed twice, I can now do power rankings based on their performances so far. I start this week:
1.    Phunk Phenomenon: Fantabulous and a half 
2.    I.aM.mE:  Freak-a-leak and half
3.    Request:Freak-a-leak
4.    Instant Noodles: Goodish and half
5.    Street Kingdom: Meh and half
6.    787 Crew (status que): Meh
7.    Iconic Boyz: I’d Rather watch a Justin Beiber concert and a half
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 HEY YO ZEKEISH! DID DEY GIT IT RIGHT?? Well, the judges did get it right. Request had an overall better performance than Footworkingz did. Flat out. The people who got it wrong was America. Seriously, this week proved that ICONic Boyz are the worst crew on the show.  It just so happens that they are the youngest, so they are still on the show. I'm hoping after two horrid performance back to back, people will realize that they are not good, and stop voting for them. It was very saddening watching FootKINGz go home. I know they were thinking what I was thinking. “I know we were better than ICONic Boyz”. Hold your head up high FootworKINGz, you did good on the show and fell victim to the horrible tweens that dominate the ABDC voting system right now. There are those who know the truth FWK! STAY  GOOD!
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Click here to return to the first page and to leave comments. Thanks again Zekeish for writing from your hospital bed!!