Anatomy of an Afterparty

When it comes to the afterparty of the show, it’s inevitable the crowd will have questions, and there were plenty at Pipeline Café’s Three 6 Mafia event.

“What happened to them being here at 10 o’clock?”

“Are they even here in Hawaii?”

Those questions, often asked with harsher language, didn’t stop people from coming in the show. By 12:30 a.m. the line still snaked around Pipeline Café. That included a bunch of the already belligerent crowd who commuted
from the show at Wet’n’Wild Hawaii in Kapolei.

Despite the long wait, the crowd on the show floor wasn’t rowdy. They passed the time with drinks and dancing.
I would say the same about folks up in the VIP booth, but I saw a few people who decided to bide their time in more, how shall I put this, amorous ways.

I passed the time by Twitter stalking the group, who are @therealjuicyj and @djpaulkom. They took the stage at Kapolei around 9 p.m., according to J’s tweets, so I figured they wouldn’t be heading back to town until around
midnight.

At 1:53 a.m., Juicy J and DJ Paul finally took the stage. What followed was an hour-long run through of their extensive back catalogue of songs. It would’ve been nice to see J and Paul trade more verses, but the Tennessee
pair sped through their set list. They would hit one verse, then a familiar chorus to get your hands up, then on to the next song.

Coming on stage that late, it was the only way Three 6 Mafia could’ve dished out club bangers like “Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body,” “Stay Fly” and “Poppin’ My Collar,” while still giving a hat tip to their horrorcore days with 1995’s “Tear Da Club Up” and a few choice cuts from 2000’s “When the Smoke Clears.”

The group invited about a dozen girls in the audience to dance with them on stage. It’s clear their mainstream success hasn’t gotten to their head.

They’re as Dirty South as ever. How these guys ended up having the same amount of Academy Awards as Martin Scorsese (one) is one of those things in life that’s truly stranger than fiction.

It was a spirited, but short set. Juicy J and DJ Paul slinked their way up to the VIP, and I had a short conversation with J. I asked him what is it about Hawaii that keeps him coming back.

“Errthang,” he slurred to me, his eyes bleary from exhaustion, and probably other reasons.

He includes the audience with “errthang.” Three 6 Mafia’s deep canon are touchstones for pre-Autotune youths, and the crowd ate it up for a short hour.

Because of the show’s length, it may have not been worth the price of admission to last night’s afterparty ($30 for general, $100 for VIP). The Kapolei show was probably better.

But as far as whether Three 6 Mafia can turn a party up, especially after everyone’s had their fill of drinks and waiting around, there’s simply no question.