Person is a crappy singer. There, I said it. His performance last night at the Rock and Roll Hotel had me thinking I had stumbled upon a tragic highschool talent show. The kind where talent-less wonders are given a forum to sing into real microphones instead of into their shower nozzles, and the result isn’t pretty. Person aka Miguel Lacsamana takes himself way too seriously. Fortunately much of his singing was drowned out by the electro-pop beats of his mixmaster friend Bernard. But what lyrics I could make out were centered around the overstated sexuality of Har Mar Superstar. Sample lyric: “I’ll be your teacher / Your student / Your doctor / Your patient.” No really, it’s ok, you don’t have to.

If Person’s milquetoast performance left listeners a little bleary-eyed, the Gray Kid’s larger-than-life persona was the perfect antidote. Watching the Gray Kid perform is kind of like watching those scenes in Ghost where Patrick Swayze speaks through the body of Whoopi Goldberg: a guy with a hipster-geek haircut is mysteriously possessed by the spirit of hiphop, and the result is dynamite. As the Gray Kid, D.C. native Steve Cooper rhymes at a lightning pace over floor-shaking breakbeats, and impressively manages to sound studio-slick while doing so. By turns dirrrty (think Ludacris), glam (think Prince) and indie (think Gym Class Heroes), the Gray Kid is above all else tongue-in-cheek, with a madcap cockiness that may or may not be ironic. He howls, he sambas, he dances on chairs, and it’s all so darn catchy that he gets away with it.