We didn’t know what we were getting into.

Upon picking up our South by Southwest (SXSW) press passes at the Austin Convention Center, we were handed a booklet that listed all of the evening musical showcases. It was mainly organized by venue, of which there were… 79. Each location had five to seven acts per night. You do the math. That’s before you add in the daylong events where dozens of acts would perform at parties hosted by everyone from MTV to Rachel Ray. Overwhelmed? So were we, and even after we narrowed down the list of groups and musicians to the ones we were most desperate to see, we still recognized that we could not be in 14 places at once. We missed Kanye, The Strokes, TV on the Radio, B.o.B and more, and that was fine — we had to make choices. We could use every column inch of today’s paper to review the ludicrous number of groups we saw over the five-day span; we don’t have that luxury. Here, then, is a snapshot.

Wu Tang Clan

For a trio of rap nerds, Wu Tang was essential viewing. If you grew up in New York, as two of us had, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and had even a passing interest in hip-hop, you listened to the Wu Tang Clan. Your education was incomplete if you ignored them. You felt it when ODB died; “protect ya neck” was part of your everyday lexicon; and you knew that when you threw up a “W” with your hands, it was palms out.

Needless to say, expectations were high for their performance at the Austin Music Hall. They were only amplified when Childish Gambino (better known as “Community” actor Donald Glover) told the crowd that the whole eight-person crew was there. We were in for a treat.

Except, we kind of weren’t. That’s not to say that Wu Tang was bad. Far from it. They played the hits; we rocked out. Ghostface Killah in particular, well, killed it. But the whole group, contrary to Glover’s claims, wasn’t there, and there was something strange and slightly off-putting about seeing U-God perform the lyrics of the absent Method Man. Throw in Wu Tang’s persistent, public complaints about the sound system — which was fine, and didn’t seem to bother any of the previous acts — and it made it, outside of the effect of seeing legends in the flesh, one of the more forgettable performances of the trip.

 

Killer Mike

Here’s what you need to know: unlike many of the other major acts at SXSW, Killer Mike was performing numerous times per day, for a week. We caught him on the last day of the festival and the man’s voice was, for lack of a better term, shot. He was honest with the crowd. He also, in true rap titan fashion, promised that it wouldn’t deter him. And it didn’t. He started with his own rendition of Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared” (he’s a guest artist on the original track), a song that’s as fiery and in-your-face (read: damn near screaming) as a hip-hop artist is going to perform. And then just when you think he’s wearing down (remember, too, that it’s 85 degrees outside and he’s performing under bright lights), he goes without a beat, just vocals, so you don’t think he’s covering up his fading voice. He is a true virtuoso. That is all.

 

Zeds Dead

As delightful as 15 hours a day of hip-hop can be, sometimes, one needs a break. Enter Zeds Dead, a dubstep DJ duo from Toronto that, in just a couple of years of existence, has made a significant splash in the electronica world. That field, though, can become decidedly monosyllabic — a beat drop here, a sample there, and so on. What sets Zeds Dead apart is the layers of not just an individual clip, but of an entire show — sure, you’ll still bob your body to a heavy bass, but you’re doing it to music that touches on a variety of musical genres while simultaneously presenting you with so much in each individual second that by the time you’ve processed what you’ve heard, you’ve already been hit with a dozen new sounds.

But perhaps most remarkable about their performances was their variation. We saw them at an underground bar on Friday and a major club on Saturday. Their sets were entirely different at each venue. Each piece takes countless hours of production to prepare, but there was no complacency to be found, and their effect on the enthusiastic crowd was the same.

Their club show, where they were the direct opener for Moby, one of the world’s most famous DJs, was cut short. They were disappointed — they still had a few more music styles that they were eager to drop. It was emblematic of their macro take on an artistic form that some dismiss as simply head-banging music. The intricacies mattered.

For the record, they blew Moby out of the water.

 

Machine Gun Kelly

One word: insanity.

Machine Gun Kelly, a heavily tattooed rapper from Cleveland, can’t legally drink. But he can spit. Fast. He got on stage at the Fader day-party and confirmed what everyone was thinking: namely, that no one knew who he was. From there, he took off, racing around stage with his hype man and rapping over the most hardcore of beats. He was quick to rip off his shirt and attempt to light it on fire; when that failed, he climbed the speaker tower, got on top, then leaned over backward, 15 feet above the crowd. His enthusiasm was unparalleled.

But he was more than just a showman. The speed with which words flew out of Kelly’s mouth was remarkable, almost like how — wait for it — a bullet comes out of a machine gun. While that may not seem like much, it is a discernible skill. Some artists can rap in double-time in the studio, only to falter live — Trae the Truth, for instance, was particularly disappointing in this regard. But Kelly was like a young YelaWolf — immensely boastful about his quick-paced flow, but with the skills to back it up.

I’d hesitate to call him a breakout star of SXSW, but at the least, hundreds people left the Fader event thinking, “Who the hell was that crazy white kid?”

When you’re going up against thousands of other acts, that might just be a good enough impression.