Jermaine Dupri and his daddy Michael Mauldin have been giving incentives for the kids to keep their grades up and stay on top of their chores off-and-on for the better part of two decades by way of the Scream tours and their various revivals. The latest incarnation to skip through The Lou was the SoSo Summer 17 tour. The show had appearances by Da Brat, JD and Bow Wow, but the main attraction was the tween and teen standouts over the last few seasons of “The Rap Game” – which is essentially a hip-hop “American Idol” that caters to the kids and airs on Lifetime. I am old enough to be a grandmother to everybody up in there except Da Brat and J.D. – including the parents and adult chaperones – but I can’t say that I didn’t have a cute little time. I had never heard of a single soul of the ten or so rising rappers to hit the stage, but the little fifth- and sixth-grader fan base got their life and knew every single word. I was cool with Bow Wow’s bite-sized performance snippet, but really would have loved to have seen more of Da Brat on the mic. I know the show was for the kids … but still. I was expecting to have to be nice (because we are dealing with kids) in my rundown, but a couple of the mini-rappers have legit flow. That girl Deetranada was the best of them. Miss thing did a whole set with no backing track vocals and a freestyle that will make you give her props. In other words, she was serving more than quite a few of our favorite grown folks blazing the charts right now.
