Kendrick Lamar Rocking with Black Hippy
My hangover reminded me to have low expectations looking inside my wallet.
We spent Friday hanging out with college coeds, flying to Los Angeles, visiting a friend named Alex Kruse at a beat battle at the Airliner and drinking hard liquor. I was also suppose to interview Grieves on this night, but the interview ended up not happening at its scheduled time. This was mostly due to having my plan to sober up on the 90 minute flight interrupted by 3 shots of Jack and a Coors Light.
We were in Los Angeles to cover Paid Dues, a hip-hop festival organized by Murs of the Living Legends and Guerrilla Union. We woke up at our friend Justin’s apartment in downtown LA and decided at the last minute to drive his car to the festival in San Bernardino instead of taking the train.
We drove 65 MPH the entire trip down East 10 Hwy. I’m told this is a miracle.
The independent hip hop festival has taken many formats throughout its six year history, including national tours. They even stopped by Eugene once, coincidentally on my wedding day (thanks for making me miss it Jen…). This year they moved everything to a single day and broke the performances up over three stages. In addition to adding Black Starr as the headliner, they also had Grindtime Now battles inside of an MMA style octagon.
I arrived exhausted and prepared to pay a price for a quick pick me up. Unfortunately there was no coffee served at Paid Dues. But the weather was perfect , $9 beers helped keep (most) people fairly sober, and a steady scent of ganja kept the vibe chill throughout the day. The majority of t-shirt designs worn to the NOS Event Center sent the message “I’m from California” or “I smoke a lot of weed” or “I’m from California and I smoke a lot of weed.”
Murs put an incredible lineup together for the event and California was there to show love.
Grieves was unfortunately the only representation from the Northwest to perform, but he represented the Northwest, Rhymesayers, and The Town extremely well.
The Bay Area performers kept things moving throughout the day on the Dues Paid Stage. The same people showing love to Kendrick Lamar and Murs were showing love to Lil B. California came out to have a good time and appreciate all the artist for their individual contributions. It really was a beautiful thing.
The crowd all screamed in unison as Eligh asked, “Yall know about Dubstep? Hell yeah you do, we invented this shit.”
Those gathered at the Grindtime Now stage went apples and bananas as Evidence and Alchemist surprised them by joining Fashawn on stage to perform Far Left.
As a hip-hop fan for the majority of my life I appreciated the wide variety of the genre available at the event. Looking at the list of artists performing on the three stages, I couldn’t help but imagine what artists I would have worked my way to the front of the crowd to see at different ages of my life. At 15 I definitely would have left the Paid Dues stage after the Asher Roth’s set to get up front to see the final battle followed by Slaughterhouse on the Grindtime stage. At 17 I was first introduced to and fell in love with music from the Bay Area. At that age, I probably would have been at the Dues Paid stage for the entire day to see artists such as Dom Kennedy, Mistah Fab, and Andre Nicatina. from 17-22 I went through an extended independent/conscious rapper appreciation mode, and would have been all about Sage Francis and Immortal Technique.
At any age I would have been ecstatic to see Black Starr headline the night. But not on that day.
The mixture of the sun, hangover and lack of coffee proved to be too much. We stayed just long enough to watch Murs absolutely shut the place down as the sun set over San Bernardino.
I left remembering exactly why I fell in love with this side of hip-hop so many years ago. The artists on stage were humble and hard working. They are teachers, comedians, friends, relatives, and the life of the party. They are people we know. Through their music, and because of the honesty within, there is this revelation that they understand us just as much as we understand them. There is no attempt to represent a fairy tale lifestyle where rappers are super rich and have sex with hot woman all day while they count their money.
We drove back listening to a pre-Sandpeople album called Paradise Lost, released in 2004, and I honestly felt a little ashamed that I traveled so far to see Paid Dues but didn’t make it out to a single night of POH-HOP to see the Northwest in action.
What a jerk I am.
But yeah… Paid Dues was dope.
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