Isaiah Rashad — Cilvia Demo

Published 2/5/24

Last week I tweeted that if I didn’t go see the Isaiah Rashad ‘Cilvia Demo’ 10-year anniversary show at The Wiltern, I would have lost all ability to experience joy from live music. I went to too many shows when I was younger. In LA I’ve been exposed to too many cheap, unsuspecting, legendary performances. Like when I was one of about ten people at the Echoplex watching Kendrick Lamar say “I love the intimate shows” when he opened for Freddie Gibbs and GZA in 2010 (a show I will never stop bragging about). I’m spoiled and getting out of the house on a Thursday night sounds exhaustingly impossible.

I’m not usually the type of person to write “But folks, I did it,” BUT FOLKS… I did it! I went to the show, and my ability to experience joy from live music was more than regained. It was reignited.

Isaiah Rashad’s ‘Cilvia Demo’ performance was the best theater show I’ve ever seen. It was like a mixture of a Mike Birbiglia-esque comedy special and a Taylor Swift-esque stadium spectacular (& also, not anything at all like either of those things). Rashad ran through the album, but he told funny and informative stories in between songs that gave a deeper context to his mindset while he was writing it. It was all pre-planned and pre-rehearsed, with costume changes kinda, but it didn’t matter. The show was perfectly nostalgic without feeling forced or put-upon. We wanted to hear these old songs. We wanted to celebrate Isaiah’s legacy with him.

More hyperbole: the crowd in the Wiltern was also the most joyous group of people I’ve ever seen gathered together. I saw a young awkward couple freak out and put their arms around each other when SZA came out. I saw people smiling and singing along all night, only pulling out their phones at big moments like SZA coming out. I wasn’t as happy as any of them, because I’ve spent a lifetime refusing to let live music really take over my body, opting instead to study performers and audiences like a dissociating freak, but I was glad to be among them. They almost made me feel a part of something special.

One of the openers, whose name I didn’t catch but might’ve been Yakiyn, asked the crowd who out there was high as fuck. Almost everyone cheered. The Wiltern was a giant hot box. This is a trend I’ve noticed at venues around LA, like The Novo, where Rashad also played a few nights later. Security doesn’t care about smoking indoors anymore. My friend commented that the crowd looked like an ocean infested with whales. Every few seconds, you’d see a smoke projectile shoot into the air out of someone’s blowhole. Maybe that’s why everyone was so joyous. WEEEEEEED AND MONEY!

The eight-date ‘Cilvia Demo’ tour is designed for those hardcore fans, who might like the album more than Rashad does himself. Rashad acknowledged onstage that he wrote some of these songs so long ago, before he was a fully-formed artist, that he had a hard time connecting with them. With new wisdom, he also admitted he learned to stop dismissing people when they told him a certain song of his was their favorite. If it resonates, it resonates. A decade later, every track on ‘Cilvia Demo’ still does.

I didn’t always think that. ‘Cilvia Demo’ wasn’t always an undisputed classic. But when I threw the album on the car stereo on the ride down to K-town, “Hereditary” opening with Isaiah at 8 AM in the morning, sipping on the Henny sent me right back. And I realized what a fool I used to be.

I recall downloading Cilvia Demo to my device when it came out—that was still a thing people like me did as far back as 10 years ago—and listening to it a lot but never fully appreciating it the way I would when The Sun’s Tirade came out two years later.

In 2014, I was skeptical. Why did TDE sign this random dude from Chattanooga? It was clear that his songwriting and storytelling skills were overshadowed on the roster, even at the time, by maybe only Kendrick. But he lacked the excitement and energy of Jay Rock or Schoolboy Q. He didn’t represent the renaissance of LA rap that was happening at the time. He wasn’t as frustratingly lovable as Ab-soul. Cilvia Demo was slower and more groove-oriented than TDE’s other releases. A lot of people were telling me I should like it but I didn’t fully understand it.

It was like a true demo to me. I could hear the potential and recognize that the songwriting was deeper and better than most forms of music. But I wasn’t listening to it on repeat and telling everyone else to check it out. I was trying to get it, and sometimes feeling dumb that I didn’t.

It took about 10 years, and the show at the Wiltern, but now I do get it. At least, I know what the album represents to me. The initial demonstration of undeniable genius. I still like The Sun’s Tirade better, but I wouldn’t have liked The Sun’s Tirade without Cilvia Demo. It’s essential but not only because it’s essential. He could have stopped here and we would have had all we needed. But because of that, he didn’t stop there and it only got better, which makes this one that much more undisputedly classic, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

The rest of the crowd at the show got it way more than I did. Isaiah Rashad pulled four separate random individuals up and had them karaoke perform a few songs word-for-word. This was a gimmick but also the highlight of the night. It gave a literal platform to Rashad’s diverse fanbase. Let them live out their rap star fantasies. Made everyone in the crowd feel like they belonged up there, too. It was hilarious. It might have been the second hand high but I can’t deny I cracked a little smirk.

In 2024, with Kendrick’s departure, I’m skeptical of TDE’s future for different reasons than I was skeptical when they first signed Rashad. The ‘Cilvia Demo Anniversary’ tour not only reignited my passion for live music, but it also gave me a surprisingly optimistic glimpse at the label’s future. Ray Vaughn is even more of a comedian than Rashad, pacing up and down the stage in between songs and doing hilarious crowd work. At one point Vaughn asked a guy in the crowd where he was from, then laughed at the guy’s reaction before saying “South Central.” “This is the only place on the tour where you have to be careful when you ask someone where you’re from,” Vaughn said, then mocked how people at other shows would just say “I’m from Denver” in a nerdy tone. I realize that me repeating this isn’t as funny as it was in the moment, so I won’t bother with his bit about Target. I’m gonna be honest though I’m so tapped out of TDE and music in general that I’d never listened to Ray Vaughn, who is from Long Beach, and calls LA County his playground. The enthusiasm of the dudes behind me screaming along to his hooks made it feel like a hometown show. A decade from now at the Ray Vaughn 10-year anniversary show, I will admit that I was wrong for not being on board sooner.

When all the openers and the random crowd members who weren’t creepy enough to get kicked out came back out for Rashad’s final few songs, the energy on stage made TDE seem like the most exciting and promising label in music. Rashad is now the elder statesmen, but his career is at an interesting point. It of course took a weird turn when those videos of him leaked a while back. He’s since made a comeback, played Coachella, addressed his “sexual fluidity” and moved on. It was nice that nobody at The Wiltern show seemed to care about that. Now, though, he’s been around long enough to do an anniversary tour. He has a couple other classics to his name, that he could be doing anniversary shows for in the near future. But it feels like his best work may be yet to come.