Today I’ll start with Rakim who to me is probably the baddest man to ever grab the mic. He’ll be doing the entire Paid in Full album at Rock The Bells. I’ve got to figure out a way to get to one of these.

As as bonus today, I can’t mention anything having to do with the movie “Do The Right Thing” without dropping in my man Radio Raheem (played by Bill Nunn ) and his epic dissertation on Love and Hate.

Peace.

I’ve been waiting to put this up since the Cavs fired Mike Brown. My feelings about him and how the season ended can be summed up in this one simple video. Catharsis complete.

One bit of advice if you are going to Coventry – bring quarters. The meters in the extended parking areas only take quarters. After finding a parking spot and realizing that I didn’t have any, we drove around the block looking for a street spot where the meters take dimes and nickels, only I forgot I had set mine and my wife’s iPhones on the hood of the car when I first got out. By the time we decided to just get change from the pizza shop I had driven around for about 10 minutes with our phones on the hood. Luckily they stayed put the entire time and when I did park I just scooped them up, laughed, and went on my way.
The pre-show of course was a DJ doing some bang-bang mixing of old school jams, mostly Wu Tang. Whoever the guy was (and he didn’t pub himself at all) he was awful. He was trying to match beats between cuts and he wasn’t even close 3 out of 4 times so he’d just train wreck it. I realize this may sound a bit disingenuous coming from me but my wife had the same look on her face that I did so I know it wasn’t just me. At the very least, it lets me know that I’m not far away.

The show got off to a slow start with a group called All Day Recess. I dug the name, the material was lacking. It was pretty easy to see why they got the first slot on the night. Very minimal stage presence, a solid flow but exceedingly average lyrics. Got to give them credit for scoring the gig though.

At this point, I actually slightly lost track of what the hell was going on. More terrible DJing and I’m watch a very animated discussion between two guys that appear to be the show organizers and a tall white dude on the side of the stage. It looked to me like the kid was trying to talk his way on to the stage and sure enough, that’s exactly what was going on. From what I could decipher over the din and through the rapidly developing Red Stripe haze (Hooray beer!), the second act had not shown yet so they let this guy grab the mic – and he wasn’t half bad. I didn’t catch his name, couldn’t repeat on rhyme he said, but remember being impressed not only by the stones that it took for him to attempt it but I thought he was a touch better than the first act.

The next hour and a half was more of the same. Random MC’s kept popping up, doing 2 or 3 average songs and then disappearing. One guy came up and rapped over backing track that contained a GZA sample which pissed off one the guys in GZA’s crew. He was standing next to me at the bar getting a beer when he just turned and started booing – loudly. Dude looked like a shorter Suge Knight so it was not the guy you’d want to irritate. Eventually he ended up on stage to bring GZA out and this guy could absolutely bring it.

It was close to midnight (and about 5 Red Stripes) by the time I finally heard the sample that signaled the GZAs imminent arrival:

When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest Samurai in the Empire, and he was the Shogun’s decapitator…

Boom. GZA steps out on stage and proceeds to do the ENTIRE Liquid Swords album. I had been listening to it all day to get hyped for it (and so Ang would recognize some songs when he did them) and my man is still spot on. He absolutely killed. The attached video is NOT from that night – it was recorded about a year ago in Toronto, but it was almost exactly how the show at the Grog started so realize THAT was going down in a venue the size of a small bar.

Now if that wasn’t enough to get me interested in going, turns out the special performance is going be done by none other that DJ Jazzy Jeff. I’ve said this in this very blog before, to me Jazzy Jeff is one of the baddest men to ever stand behind the tables and I think he gets slept on a lot because he and Will didn’t play the whole “from the streets” mentality, they just made music. Needless to say, I can’t NOT go to that ish so I’ll be in the P next Thurday.

Today’s Jam of the Day – A Touch of Jazz = early Jeff at his finest.

And video #2 -a supporting argument for Jeff’s underrated skills. I think this was from a BET awards show the year that Jam Master Jay was shot. It’s a tribute that featured DJ Premier, Grandmaster Flash, Kid Capri, and Jeff hitting cleanup.