Round three of my day by day coverage of my journeys on the Freshly Dipped tour DJing for Tanya Morgan alongside Hieroglyphics, Blue Scholars & more. Hope you’re still interested…
TM, special guest Che Grand & me in NYC (pic jacked from Audible Treats, thanks Michelle)
Day 21 – Providence: Traffic out of NYC was THICK and it took twice as long as expected to get to Providence, but we still made it there in good spirits thanks to the random assortment of CDs that Von grabbed (Saadiq’s first solo joint and Snoop’s Topp Dogg album), Don’s early Jerx/Ilwil demos and his infamous new jack swing/early 90s r&b collection (classic material). The show went down in a smaller, packed out club type venue and it was hot as fuck. The crowd was super into things though so I can’t be mad. Big up DJ Direkt, Sylvy and her girls and the local opening DJ who played all wax (sorry I can’t remember your name homey).
The coolest block in Portland
Day 22 – Portland, Maine: We pulled into Maine in the middle of a cold, overcast day and everything seemed cool enough when we pulled up to the venue. The friendly door guy pointed us in the direction of food and when we walked out to see some kind of fresh little graf event going on behind the venue. We checked it out for a minute and kept walking down the street towards food, next thing we know we’re realizing that there’s weirdos of all sorts, lots of afternoon drunks and a large amount of extra creepy homeless people around town, one tried to fight Donwill for no reason at all. The whole vibe was super weird, I can see how Stephen King could be from there. Anyways, we grabbed some food (local flava = haddock) and made our way back to the venue at what ended up being a good show. The town doesn’t really get a chance to see to many shows like the tour, so the whole crowd was super enthusiastic and we couldn’t be mad at that.
Day 23 – Burlington, VA: First off, let me say that Higher Ground was one of the best venues we played on the tour. From the numerous, clean, well stocked green rooms to the friendly staff to the super enthusiastic crowd, everything about the show in Burlington was dope. It kinda reminded me of a newer version of the Fox Theatre up in Boulder, which is easily one of my top three favorite places to see a show or play ever. Also, me, Don, Von, A-Plus and Tajai got into everybody’s favorite, the classic Nas vs Jay-Z debate, backstage before the show, gotta love that it still goes on in 2008.
The Burlington crowd via rushed iPhone camera shot before we got on.
Day 24 – Off Day in Burlington: The highlight of the day off was finding this bus in Vermont and getting a Ben & Jerry’s smoothy (local flava!!!). We had an early night so we could wake up super early to head up north along with everyone else from the tour on some caravan ish (for work permit purposes). We had heard crazy horror stories from most of Hiero about loooooong delays at the border so we cleaned up the van and got ready for a long day at customs.
Day 25 – Ottawa: We made it through customs in only four short hours. Those four hours were actually pretty entertaining, from finding out most of the tour’s real names to joking about tour bullshit to talkin conspiracy theories with Casual outside, the time went by way quicker that it could have. From the border we headed through Montreal (a little too French for me) and on into Ottawa. Ottawa seemed cool enough, for some reason we went on extra early and in general the show was a little thin. I ended up getting some skunky (or otherwise bad) Hoegaarden (which is one of my favorite beers) that left me hurting for the rest of the night.
A-Plus, DJ Lex (freshly dipped) & Knobody in the T-Dot
Day 26 – Toronto: On the way to Toronto we stopped and got some fish & chips (delicious) and some Canadian junk food. We got wine gums (yuck, they get the gas face, regardless of what Che Grand claims), some gross slushy drink and my favorite, the kinder egg (my prize was this toy that’s also a crayon) and kinder bar. More importantly, we made it to Toronto, which is a super dope city. The t-dot is beautiful. Beautiful city, beautiful women, beautiful vibe. The venue, Mod Club, had the coolest lighting on the tour, TO packed the spot and the Blue Scholars’ homey Chev (what up Chev!) joined the tour to perform a verse feature with them too, good time. And by the way, late night Chinese food is the shit.
Day 27 – London, Ontario: I gotta admit, I’d never heard of London, Ontario until all this tour iddish came together. It seemed like a random ass place when I heard about it and it turned out to be extra random when we got there. We pulled into town to check in to the hotel and it seemed like a super clean, nice Canadian city/town with the exception of some weird sex shop which was in the block between the hotel and an Old Navy. We headed downtown before the show for a little exploring where we were greeted by what had to be the horniest stop of the tour, no joke. It seemed like the whole town was just crazy sexually frustrated. Grimy lookin sex shops, strip clubs, adult plays (ahahahaha), $7.99 porn DVD specials at the convenience store. With that said, the crowd was hands down the livest on the tour. They went NUTS when I was setting up my DJ ish and stayed nuts until the show ended. It was one of those nights where it get so humid that it drips sweat from the ceiling. Big up the heads in London and thanks for the energy (maybe it comes from all that sexual frustration…lol…hopefully not).
Day 28 – Ann Arbor: We woke up in Canada especially ready to come back to the U.S. after a few days of ultra limited communications (A-Plus scared me with tales of having phone bills from Canada that were so big they knocked off $400 and they were still huge) and the weird vibe of London and were greeted by a great night in Ann Arbor. Donwill got sick from a $7.99 steaks & eggs from a diner and rallied for a dope show. The show was especially dope from the get go. At soundcheck I DJed a long, goofy freestyle session between Don, Von, the Blue Scholar’s producer/DJ Sabzi (who’s definitely not a rapper but was fantastic in the session) and the Scholar’s homey Chev. A little later the Blind Pig opened doors to a line around the block that was especially up on my mixtapes (gotta love that). When we got onstage the venue was almost packed and they rocked hard with us from the get go. Well, except this one who stood at the front, arms crossed bobbing his head left to right in a way that made it hard to tell if he was feeling the music and or shaking his head “no”. That dude ended up getting more into it by the end and turned out to be none other than TM’s label mate and super dope Detroit based MC Finale (and no he wasn’t fronting of TM, regardless of how it first looked). Last but not least the crowd was treated to a very dope Von Pea freestyle after he switched up the line “my best friend’s in heaven” to “J Dilla’s in heaven” during “Stay Tuned”. If anyone recorded that show/song (or really any of the songs from the tour), please holla at your boy.
Day 29 – Columbus, OH: We made a super early morning stop in Cincinatti to check in with Don’s fam and do laundry before copping a couple of bags of BBQ Grippos and heading up to Columbus. At the show we had the honor of being introduced by J Rawls of Lone Catalysts fame as Don performed for his home-state crowd as we battled the minor technical difficulties that plagued all of the acts throughout the night.
Day 30 – Chicago: Chicago was an all around dope time. AWESOME food (Harold’s Chicken is AMAZING…Mild sauce + salt & pepper = magic, not to mention Chicago style pizza is dope too), the city has a ton of personality, the lake is beautiful, the city has a lot of TM fans and we had a great turnout for the show, can’t ask for much more. We almost completely switched up the set and the result was refreshing but a little awkward compared to how well the more familiar set (even with nightly variations) was going. With that said, everyone in Chicago got to see a set with “3 Emcees” (with Ilyas being especially missed), “We Doin Our…”, “Bout To Be Some” and “How Low” amongst others.
Stay tuned as I wrap up all the tour iddish in the next couple of days…Video clips from Boulder, me and TM as Purple Rain extras, pics from the CO show’s afterparty at the Solution & more…
