Category Archives: On the Road

On the Road With PPP in Detroit @ CityFest – 07.01.09

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Our West Coast trip in March wasn’t enough… Waajeed, Coultrain, Monica Blaire, Sydney Driver, and myself had to get back up again and roll through a couple more spots before it was all said and done. The first stop this time around was the spot where three of us call home, Detroit where we played at CityFest opening for De La Soul on the main stage.

Because of the early flight, I stayed up all night (surprise, surprise) and arrived at BWI Airport at about 4am. Delta was obviously having problems checking folks in, because despite the fact that I was there 2 hours prior to take off, by the time I got checked in, went through security, and got to the gate it was 5:50am …my flight left at 6am.


Once I landed in The D, Moms came to scoop from the airport and I got home and passed out on the couch. When I finally woke up, I checked outside and made sure I said a prayer for the bad weather to hold off until we played… Well, the weather held off during soundcheck, that was no problem. But soon after that, it started to POUR. We were scheduled to go on at 7pm and because of the downpour, the people got outta there for a minute. The rain held off for a little while once we did get on stage and the soundman had us sounding real good up there. The rain started to come back down in the middle of us playing “Stay With Me.” The thing that got me was, once the rain came back…the people stayed – how ’bout that?! I think that said a whole lot about the crowd and support group that we have back home, kats hung with us out there and I am very appreciative of that. Moms, Pops and my younger sister came out… popped open the umbrellas and enjoyed themselves – even took pictures for me. After the show, my family came back to the trailer and kicked it for a little while with the entire group, the brotha Maestro of Silent Riot stopped through, along with Mudd of 5 Ela. Everybody was just crackin’ jokes, talkin’ shiff and having a good time.

I ended up rolling to Champps with the family to get fat and have some drainks, in which I had two… We closed the night out by laughing at Shaq & Cedric the Entertainer’s Comedy special, which was HILARIOUS.

On to Chicago….!

BoltBus from D.C. to NYC

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Traveling to rehearsal in NYC for the PPP shows earlier today was interesting as always via the BoltBus, which for those who don’t know is a cheap ticket and it advertises free wi-fi, and working power outlets for your cell, mp3 player, laptop, etc. This was actually my second trip to New York via BoltBus – my first was in March. That time I had no issues with the wi-fi connection or the power outlets…started off on the right foot.

This time I wasn’t so fortunate. I couldn’t get a wi-fi signal on my iPhone, why? Because the ‘log in’ page that the nigganet defaulted to wouldn’t scroll down far enough for me to reach the ‘I Accept’ option. Therefore, I was forced to accept AT&T’s 3G availability all the way up 1-95. Ok, no problem. I decided to keep folks up to the minute by Tweeting every now and then about the loud ass kids that I happened to be sitting behind and the lil five-foot-nothing lady in the seat across the isle from me who decided she would occupy and entire row on her own. Alright… kats were keeping me on my toes, but it was alright because I still had the trusty nigganet on me to keep me busy the duration of the trip. So about an hour and a half into the drive, I figured it was time to try and get some sleep. While I got sleep, I wanted to plug my phone up to make sure it was charged back up, right? Nope! The punk ass (lack of) power outlet in front of me refused to allow that to happen by not working. I looked around at others on the bus and I noticed that no one else had anything plugged into their outlets either…WACK. So I spent the last half of the trip attempting to save my battery by not answering calls or texts (of course that’s the time when everybody wants to call or text).

Despite my phone’s power troubles, entertainment on the bus itself was never an issue. There was a kat about 4 rows in front of me who looked like damn Antonio Fargas who was on his cell talking lous as hell… You know the type of loud where a kat is just excited to have a cell phone and wants to let the world about it in his volume? This type of thing may have been effective in 84/85 when there were only a few kats carrying those big gray brick lookin cell phones, but in 2009 when EVERYBODY has one?… Nah bruh. Just when I thought ole FlyGuy was finished, he proceeded to pull out a sammich bag full of a red liquid, cracked the bag open and drank from it. I was sitting in my seat with my jaw on the floor like, ‘I KNOW this kat isn’t drinking some damn red Kool-Aid from a sammich bag!!” After no believing what the hell I had just seen, I waited for him to drink from the bag again, just to confirm for my OWN sanity the fact that I wasn’t seeing things. Huggie Bear didn’t disappoint, he tipped his head back and took a swig from the sammich bag one more time just so I could sit there by myself and die laughing while looking crazy. I hopped on Twitter for a hot second and wrote something about it and kats didn’t even believe me. I will say this as many times as it takes… I can NOT make this stuff up y’all….

 

Oh yeah, rehersal went pretty well too.

The Foreign Exchange in Detroit – 06.04.09

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I’ll be honest, I was really looking forward to going back home for the second time in a matter of about 10 days to play a show with Foreign Exchange. Ever since we started playing together in November, I have been asked in just about EVERY city we have played in, “When are y’all playing in the D?” With the way things have been looking economically here recently, I had absolutely NO answer for that question. Well, we finally got a show back home at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History – which, until recently I had no idea that they even held performances there. 

Anyway, me, Omar and Biscuit arrived in Detroit in the morning and I drove them up to the house. It was already weird to see my D.C. kats in my hometown, much less kickin it at the house. Then, I took them to The Original House of Pancakes over on 10 mile in Southfield. We HAD to head to the hotel after that because the ‘itis began to show itself as the fellas were in the car OUTTA THERE. I had enough time to sneak in a workout before heading to soundcheck. 

Overall, the show went well. Kats who came out, came OUT and seemed to really be into the show. I saw a few familiar faces… not as many as I thought would show up so it was actually good to play in front of a new crowd. My family was in there sitting front row and enjoying every bit of the show, I’m glad they enjoyed themselves. Of course I never have enough time to catch up with everyone when I go home, I don’t care how long I’m there for. I did get to kick it w/KT, Malik Alston, DJ Sicari, K-Fresh, tREBLEFREE, Alex Rogers, Roxstar, and my man Tate McBroom. See y’all again when I go back…

Pre-Christmas Chicago Trip…12.22.07

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Maaan, when I tell y’all I had fun in Chicago this past Saturday… I MEAN it. My boy Damont got me from Midway at about noon and it was uphill from there…. 

We hit up Wishbone on Washington for some Shrimp and Grits, then hit up Dr. Wax to catch up with the brotha Duane Powell before the benefit show. By then, it was time to go to soundcheck where I met up with Eric Roberson, Cherisse Scott, Tiaybe, The Primeridians, and finally met YahZarah face-to-face after doing a joint with her back in April for the new Foreign Exchange album…..man what a talented group of kats. Then arrives my group of brothers from home, The Gorilla Funk Mob ready to rock. ….and can you say let’s meet up and play on no rehearsal? The DuSable Museum was a nice spot to play too, although I couldn’t see the crowd that well at all from the stage, but I certainly heard y’all and felt the support after the show w/those who approached me in the lobby with positive words. We played a 45 minute set of stuff from Freelance and one joint from Passion & Definition (“Open Invitation”). It was good to perform w/my kats Tate, G-Rock & Mikus…..ALWAYS having fun shedding out. The thing was……the Dr. Wax Benefit show was just the beginning. We headed over to the after party spot to see what was goin on. We got in to that joint and… …..well…… the joint was pretty… uhh, wack.

So kats gathered outside and all the sudden Cherisse busts out with, “I’ll cook….”

Then YahZarah says, “Yeah, I’ll make some peach cobbler and salmon cakes…!”

Wait a minute……what in the hell?  Y’all just rocked your sets at the show and now y’all are about to cook?!? Maaaaan, it felt like college or som’n. So damn if we all didn’t chip in about $10 a piece so that they could go grocery shopping @ about 1:30am to cook for kats…….In the meantime, me and went back to he and his fiancée’s spot for a drink, then came back out to the REAL after party.

We got there and the brotha Shawn Wallace who played keys for the house band that night made us a drink and it was a straight laugh-a-thon from that point on. Macaroni and cheese was already sitting out in a tin looking so lovely…..so I decided to devour about 3 scoops worth. Next came the salmon cakes….ahyessir. I did end up going back for seconds. How about some Southern style potatoes by Cherisse? Goodness…. And to top it all off……the peach cobbler w/some vanilla ice cream, which ended up getting taken care of at about 5am. Man, man, MAN….Chicago sure knows how to treat a brotha……….

Pictures: (Top to bottom) – 1. Me and Damont,  2. Me and Eric Roberson, 3. Duane Powell, YahZarah and me, 4. Me and YahZarah while she cooks salmon cakes, 5. Me and Damont puttin a hurting on YahZarah’s peach cobbler at 5am.