Mr. Ebranes was easily the most surprising act of Sept. 18’s hip-hop show at Boomers. Yeah, he’s most often encountered as the witty yet ultimately exhausted-looking host for a handful of the hip-hop shows at Boomers. But when it came time to do his own set, dude ripped it apart. Branes sounds a lot more like an L.A. rapper than one from Vegas, even though he references Sin City in his lyrics. The vibe is indie rap mixed with gangster, like he could be wearing skinny jeans and dunks or Dickies and a bandana and you’d believe it either way. His tune “Everything’s Love” has the catchy, call-and-response quality used for crowd control (and he uses it like the best of them), though he doesn’t really need it since his towering stage presence had Saturday’s crowd at full attention.
If you’ve been looking for a local hip-hop act in the same camp as Living Legends or the Stones Throw crew, Ebranes should be sent to the front of your “must see” queue.