Thee Phantom & The Illharmonic
Shubert Theatre
New Haven
Nov. 22, 2025
Somewhere in Egypt in the mid-1950s, a flute player hit a melody so hard it would reverberate across generations, nations, and interpolations. As the world approached the dawn of a new millenium, producer Timbaland would borrow the flute tune for Jay-Z’s hit track “Big Pimpin’” featuring UGK. There was something about the grandeur of strings and woodwinds that constituted a fitting backdrop for lines about a “heart cold as assassins” and the dramatic introduction of UGK’s Texan rap style to HOV’s New York base.
Listeners woke up to a new sonic landscape, and “Big Pimpin’” had them asking one question: What is that sample?
That’s the story of how music-lovers in the Western world came to know Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez’s 1957 sensation “Khosara” a cool 40-and-change years after it was first released.
When I heard that same flute trill in the second half of hip-hop orchestra Thee Phantom & The Illharmonic’s set at the Shubert Theatre Saturday night, it felt like a cycle had just been completed.
The Illharmonic combines instruments like violin, piano, and sousaphone with a DJ to play orchestral covers of hits like Too $hort’s 2006 “Blow the Whistle” and Black Sheep’s 1991 “The Choice Is Yours.” On the mic are husband-and-wife duo Jeffrey McNeill, better known as Thee Phantom, and Andrea Coln, or The Phoenix. The two have been together for 25 years—since “Big Pimpin’” dropped, if my math is right—and their chemistry comes to the forefront on stage.
Their between-songs banter and vocal harmonies, sometimes joined by singer Jessica Lyric Harp, kept the crowd’s energy high all through the evening. Behind them, virtuosic strings, heavy percussion, and a shining brass section with occasional marching-band-like bravado turned club bangers into a two-hour cinematic soundtrack.
It took only a few notes for the audience to recognize each song and move accordingly. At the start of the second half, described by the emcees as the “parental discretion part of the show,” everyone jumped out of their seats at the iconic intro to “Back That Azz Up,” ready to break it down to the 1998 New Orleans bounce track.
It was another case of Thee Phantom and The Illharmonic’s musical blend mirroring what the original producer had in mind, just in a new direction.
“I’m thinking orchestra,” producer Mannie Fresh recounted in 2019, describing how he landed on strings to herald the start of the track. “Make the bassline something that the hood would rock to, but the sounds gotta be kinda like some orchestrated sounds.”
It’s a recipe that stays fresh. While the producers of “Back That Azz Up” and “Big Pimpin’” brought in strings and woodwinds to add a tone of severity to the beginnings of their beats, the Illharmonic proved centuries-old instruments can keep up with the whole piece, even as the lyrics get down and dirty. Throughout the show, there was a sense of reverence for the original hip-hop tracks, each remixed rendition an ode to long-standing club fixtures. What was “new” was once brought into hip-hop beats for its antiquity: the immersive sound of a multi-part orchestra.
McNeill and Coln’s quarter-century of romantic partnership brought more than alignment to the stage. The couple also poked fun at the strains of making it work, teasing each other and hyping up the crowd for a husband versus wife rap battle, complete with orchestral accompaniment.
“I might be the better emcee in the house,” Coln taunted, to the ooohs of the audience. She called on all the women in the crowd for support, which they gave without a moment’s hesitation. “Ladies, this is light work.”
The pair got in each other’s faces as they battled, amping up the tension before coming together for “We’re double (double) trouble, and we’re bubbling hot.” The Illharmonic Orchestra behind them kept stakes high.
The Phoenix would make up with Thee Phantom, but not right away.
First, she had to get in one more dig, starting with a slow, “I’m gettin’ tired of your shit.” It was the right time for some Erykah Badu. The audience helped, joining the Greek-chorus-like “Call him,” after every warning to “ca-all Tyrone.”
Coln’s focus on women artists brought with it an expansion of the hip-hop genre. She kept the neo-soul groove going with Badu’s feature in The Roots’ “You Got Me,” adding to the narrative arc of the couple’s spat by framing it as a make-up song. McNeill chimed in for Black Thought’s verse: “Somebody told me that this planet was small…”
First violinist Tauhida “Tah” Smith, in chunky glasses and hoops, got up from her chair to pop a squat as she drove the message home. Then she leaned fully into her star power for the next song, Beyoncé’s “Cuff It.” The singers took a break while Smith went in on the melodies, just her and DJ John Morrison. The audience’s ensuing applause was the loudest of the whole night.
While we were in the 2020s, Coln came back to the mic for Victoria Monet’s 2023 “On My Mama,” a song that worked beautifully with the type of orchestral arrangement The Illharmonic offered. Morrison provided a booming bass that felt like it could shake the cars outside on College St., and the strings accentuated the hook’s syncopated rhythm. “On my…mama, on my…hood,” Coln sang while the orchestra hit the pocket in her pauses.
Then The Illharmonic brought it back to the ‘90s for a classic: Sir Mix-a-Lot’s 1996 “Jump On It.” One by one, the performers on stage took the room through the song’s familiar moves, and the crowd danced along with them.
In a year where white musicians like Rosalía and Ariana Grande are marking their departure from genres associated with the global majority (reggaeton and dembow in Rosalía’s Motomami album, and R&B in Grande’s 2010s era) with an embrace of orchestras, theatrical and otherwise, Thee Phantom and The Illharmonic prove the genre shift isn’t necessary. The ascension, seriousness, and majesty of the orchestra are not separable from The Illharmonic’s dedication to hip-hop.
Saturday night’s show at the Shubert highlighted what hip-hop heads have known for decades: strings and woodwinds go well with rap and bounce. What’s new becomes old, and what’s old becomes new again. Reinterpretations abound, and sometimes the reinterpretations of those interpretations find themselves surprisingly close to the source.
Filled with throwbacks, new takes, and a play on real-life relationship drama, Thee Phantom and The Illharmonic’s performance was a celebration of hip-hop as well as a practice in the art itself.
