At the Vogue Theatre on Saturday, September 19

Not every Saturday-night concert experience gives you the opportunity to stand in a rain-and-piss-soaked alleyway with a bunch of half-cut teenaged hip-hop fanatics, but then again, it’s not every Saturday night that Joey Bada$$ is in town. The performance marked the third time the 20-year-old rapper had hit the Vogue Theatre in just over two years, and between his steady presence in Vancouver and the recent release of his big-time B4.DA.$$ LP, the Brooklyn-bred rapper has locked down a sizeable West Coast fan base. It was so much so that by the time the show was supposed to kick off, there was still a monstrous lineup of all ages attendees waiting to get in curving through city streets.

Once you finally got inside you would have seen a quick opening set from Joey Bada$$’s buddy, NYCk Caution. On-point were the firebrand’s puffed-up performances of stoner anthem “School High”, the pogo-starting boom of “On My Life” and a pair of tracks set to appear on a forthcoming mix tape.

Following a brief DJ set from Statik Selektah that celebrated the lives of fallen rappers like Sean Price, Biggie Smalls, and the Pro Era’s Capital Steez, Bada$$ bounded through a haze of smoke to anoint the masses with the peace-and-harmony-minded bars of “Save the Children”. But while Selektah served up a steady stream of soul-sampling beats, young Joey’s voice has evolved from a smooth in-studio flow towards an aggressive in-person bark. That said, there are worse things than watching the guy go absolutely buck above the eased-back swerve of “95 to Infinity”.

Later, he’d gleefully chew out feeble microphone foes on “World Domination”, turn things up with his guest verse from A$AP Rocky’s “1 Train”, shout out the ’90s babies during New York throwback track “Sweet Dreams”, and wildly pantomime the act of a puppet being tangled up in strings on the Geppetto-referencing “Big Dusty”.

Bada$$’s stage show was lit, but the crowd went just as wild. Ball-cap-wearing bros went word-for-word with their hero out in the aisles, while a group of young ladies were invited on-stage to move along with him to the high-BPM boom of “Escape 120”.

Shifting gears, Bada$$, Static Selektah, and Caution took a time-out to stream Pro Era group cut “Like Water”, steered by a verse from Capital Steez. Though the audience ate it up, a request for a moment of silence for the fallen rapper didn’t fare as well. Caution and Bada$$ stood slack-jawed and dumbfounded at the disrespectful rabble, which included a clutch of kids whose cries of “shut the fuck up” weren’t exactly as helpful as they intended.

“I wish I could slap every one of you talking,” Static Selektah told the throng in disgust. Bada$$ channeled his frustration by stage-diving out into the crowd during the shotgun-blasted “Survival Tactics”, another track that had Steez’s bars piped posthumously through the speakers.

After the show wrapped, Bada$$ would hop out into the crowd to catch a few high fives before bidding us adieu until the next time. Judging by his track record, he should be street legal worldwide by the time he returns. Considering the shameful crowd display this time around, hopefully Vancouver will be a bit more grown up by then too.