Victor Shade Album Release
I drove up to Seattle on Saturday night (and missed Massive, sadly enough) to rock with Luck One at the Victor Shade album release party. Now I had no idea who Victor Shade was, nor am I particularly impressed with his music after the fact, but I'll tell you who I was impressed with. But first...
So Luck and I arrived to the party location at 11 - an underground loading zone in the heart of downtown Seattle - and the only person there was a setup guy who insisted that they'd get started around midnight and that "it's gonna crack". Doubtful and upset I'd driven to Seattle for a wack show, I went and got some food and an energy drink. By 11:30, people were circling the block and hanging out near the building... By 12, the doors were open and there were a few dozen people dancing to the smooth spins of DJ 100 Proof and picking up drinks from the makeshift bar.
So DJ 100 Proof... Now that's one cool white dude! Even though he'd done a monster job scratching over my track "For the Gifted" for the Cut Em Or Pay Em record, I'd never actually met him and was really impressed with how he spun for our set. Also, he works with an entertainment group called Members Only, and I think we might see some collaborations in the future.
Oh yeah, our set... So Luck wanted to do They Don't Want It and let me tell you IT WENT HARD!!! We rocked about 12:30 and the place was packed. There were at least a hundred people packed in that cargo bay and they were jumping up and down, W's up still from when we did Warrior, yelling THEY DON'T WANT IT!!! Ha ha... Then the homies Jose and Nelson started getting me drunk... Yup, It "cracked"!
But before I took in too much liquor, I peeped a set by another Seattle mainstay I'd never actually met, Fatal Lucciano. Dude's only about 5'2" but he gets busy! His cadence is eerily similar to Biggie's so perhaps I'm partial to his style. Regardless, dude knows how to rock a crowd and we had some good convo afterwards.
Oh, highlight of my night actually came the next morning when I came out of Luck's apartment to find that my car had been towed... Boo!!!!
Twista in Eugene
After taking a day of rest on Sunday, the homie Nick drove me down to Eugene where I opened for Twista with my Salem family, Matty and Payne at The Blueprint This whole day was a crazy one and I'd love to explain why but I fear the FCC. Anyway, I just want to say ON THE RECORD that I'm hella jealous of Twista's security detail. Them dudes took over the club and at one point - while Twista was sound checking - they moved all of the "other artists" into a lobby and guarded all exits. I felt like I was in a refugee camp.
The team performance went very well. The crowd was huge, and we owned it. After we finished, Mr. D.O.G. (who is really should not rap with his t-shirt tucked in) took the stage and continued yelling "They Don't Want It, heyyy!!!" Effin biter. LOL. On a random thought tip, I found that there's a nice population of Black folks that live in Eugene and are not students. This was very surprising to me, but very interesting...
Twista's set was amazing. As we already know, dude's got an incredible repertoire of hit records and he peeled them off effortlessly. From hard hitters to panty droppers, he wrecked shop for about 40 minutes before his security escorted him to the VIP area - as if he were the president.
Then came the hater move. Twista's impressive security squad - which appeared to be made up of former football players, MMA fighters and WWF stars - locked down the VIP section (which the other performers previously had access to) and only admitted pretty women. Sooo... after Twista rocked, the party was full of underage kids, thirsty men and goofy gals. This one thirsty male groupie followed me around the entire night and kept wanting to shake my hand... Who does that??? So we dipped back to Portland; and I had to drive because my "driver" got drunk. Ha ha!
Still had a blast tho... See?
