I was in Tucson Arizona the other night on The Family Tour.  It’s a very pretty city, so I tried to walk around and take some pictures.  Mostly of the city itself and not really the show or venue.  If you’ve never been there, it’s hot, it’s beautiful, and the people are really nice.

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This time around pretty much everything was the opposite.

This time around the club wasn’t a club at all. It was a big ass barn on the fairgrounds. One of those spots where they have livestock competitions and auctions. Dirt floors and all, with bleachers along the right side. The building was completely made of metal, so the acoustics were pretty weird, with the sound bouncing off the walls in a way that could be pretty abrasive at times, but was to be expected when you consider that concerts were probably the farthest thing from their minds when they built the place.

So we played there last night, and it was live as fuck.

Early in the night I could see the crowd getting real hyped to the music groove was playing, especially when he played Old Dirty Bastard. You saw a bunch of W’s go up in the air.

The crowd was easily the youngest crowd we’ve seen of the tour. It was sold out at 1800 capacity, and my guess is that at least 80% of those kids were under 21. Lots of highschool aged kids.

I always remember Missoula crowds as doing this weird moving mosh pit kind of thing, where almost the entire crowd will sway side to side with the beat, almost in unison. it’s not exactly a mosh pit because nobody’s jumping out individually, but it looks like a gigantic wave made of people, swaying left to right as you perform. It’s something I’ve never seen anywhere else. The crowd in Bozeman was doing that last night. It looks really chaotic at first, but its fresh because they actually move with you as you’re rocking.

The acoustics were weird to where I’m pretty confident that it was difficult for the crowd to hear my lyrics last night, but I’m not sure if that mattered. They’re more into the energy of a performance there. Met a lot of supporters at the merch table.

The funniest shit I saw all night was a kid leaving the drinking section of the club with his pbr and security telling him he couldnt take it into the all ages section. The kid says ok, then asks if he can finish it, and they say yes. Dude proceeds to chug about 90% of it, then take the can and spike it on the ground right at securities feet, then take off running. It was so funny, but i didn’t laugh because the security dude looked at me like WTF? I just shook my head and looked down.

At the end of the night a dude asked me if I could go get Slug and tell him to come out. I assumed it was because he wanted him to sign something, but when I asked why he was like “because i wanna battle him!” I was like “oh, nah dog, I can’t get slug out here. he’s a grown man. he does what he wants to do.”

The buildings and businesses in Bozeman have some really interesting character to their design. Lots of random sculptures and statues all over town. A lot of their business signs have some great looking signs as well. I took a bunch of pics below.

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Well, its good to see that Milwaukee hasn’t changed.

I continue to see wild shit when I play there.

During my set some dude started throwing something towards the stage. I didn’t see it at first but rare groove did and said something. Then we realized that he was throwing money. Balled up bills. I don’t know if dude thought that was a cool gesture of support or what.  But I would much rather have had him just buy a CD.  Needless to say I didn’t pick it up. Groove was like “what they fuck? What u think we are, strippers? Fuck that.“

Saw a chick take a nasty drunken fall right in front of the merch table.  It was ill how she pivoted like she was about to turn around, but then wiped out right on her back.  She was a taller chick so it looked like she was falling in slow motion.

Another chick came up to the merch table and said she wanted to meet “dude w/ the dreads and pony tail“, my dj rare groove. Then when she shook his hand, she was like “guess who you remind me of?” he said “who?” and she said “bob marley!” Groove looked at her like WTF?  I was like “wow, that’s the most original shit I’ve ever heard. How did you come up with that? You’re amazing!“

White people, for the love of God please stop saying that any black person w/ dreads looks like or reminds you of Bob Marley. You’re embarrassing yourself and every other white person with good sense about themselves with that shit.

So me, groove, and Budo started clowning her.  Then she got all sensitive like “why are yall fucking with me?” and we were like “shit, you started it. bring it!“

Her girlfriend saw it wasn’t going to well, grabbed her by the arm and walked her away.

About five minutes later, there were two black dudes at the table and this white chick cut through a bunch of people already in line, came up to one of them and was like “oh my god there’s black people here!” trying to be funny. I think she knew the dudes somehow, but the dude looked at her like “bitch you’re embarrassing me” and didn’t even respond even though she said that shit loud as fuck.  I was like “you know her?” and he just had the stone faced, fuck-this-bitch expression.

Saw a fight in street as I was headed to the after party.  One dude slapped the second dude like 2-3 times right out in the middle of a busy area.  Then another dude jumped in and they started slappin eachother back and forth.  I kept dippin.

I was dancing with this chick at the after party who told me no less than 5 times that she wished she had a “ghetto booty”. Im like “cut that out”, but she insisted nothing was wrong with what she was saying because she really wishes she actually had a “ghetto booty”.  I think she even turned around and put her hand on her ass every time she said it to me.  White women, please stop using the term “ghetto booty”. I beg of you.  It’s not a good look.

I decided to bounce and go to sleep.

As I was leaving the after party I saw a pack of chicks drive past another group of chicks and yell out the window loud as fuck calling them all ugly. The walking chicks yelled back.

Shit was wild, as usual.

I know it seems like I’m not talking about the show much, but I figured that’s not as interesting as the city of Milwaukee is as a whole.

I came across a lotta people that were real aggressive for no good reason.  Sometimes they would be aggressive about being nice to you, which is some wild ass shit. 

“The cd is $5″ – rare groove

“What? Fuck that shit! I’m paying $15!” – random dude

“Huh?” – groove

“Fuck that shit! I’m giving you 15 bucks!!!” – random dude

“Uh..ok” – rare groove

Aggressive niceness is just fucking weird.

However, a cat that came to my Madison show in March came out.  When he came to the show in Madison a few months back he snuck a big ass bottle of vodka in the club for us.  He will always be my dude for that.  This time he brought me one of those tiny, key-chain, voice recorders.  As soon as I saw him standing in line for merch I recognized him.  It was fresh. Dudes like that make you forget about the knuckleheads.

And my dude Kid Cutup always kills the parties. Love hearing that dude spin.

I met a LOT of cool, nice, normal people at the show as well.  People who encouraged me to keep doing what I’m doing, and picked up vinyl, cds, or a t-shirt–or just gave me props.  Its just unfortunate that knuckleheads are always trying to make their presence known so much.  But truth be told they actually make the cool people stand out even more, so maybe that’s a good thing.

But in case you’re wondering, yes the show was fresh. I think the energy of the Madison crowd was a little better, but Madison crowds are hard for any city to compete with.

Some pics for you:

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• Photography: Atmosphere’s “To All My Friends” Tour at Orpheum Theatre (Madison): http://t.co/kiDVmJz

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The drive in itself wasn’t bad, but driving 9 hours off of 3 hours of sleep doesn’t make it any easier.

The show last night was at the Orpheum and it was sold out.  I’m gonna guess between 1200-1500 kids there.  They were still pouring in after Atmosphere had already hit the stage.

I don’t think I’ve been on a Rhymesayers tour that had so much apparel for sale.  I thought I was gettin busy with my two shirts, then I saw like 30 other shirts for sale and felt humbled.  Shout out to the people who bought shirts last night.

Met lots of cool people last night.  Lots of crazy people out as well. I think I’ve seen somebody get yoked up, slapped up, yelled at, or kicked out of the club almost every time I’ve been to this city.  Let’s just say the nickname “madtown” is fully justified.

I felt bored after soundcheck and didn’t know what to do with myself.  In the past I would always be drinking during that time.  I ended up reading a little bit, but still had some anxiety about not drinking. Despite being offered at least 10-15 drinks I made it without any alcohol.  The gesture is great, so lately I’ve been just taking water or soda instead.

We overcame some serious laptop problems at the beginning of our set.

Off to Milwaukee.

Some pics.

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WTF?

Apparently some unknown force transformed the space that used to be my living room into a stock room of some sort.

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Rap life.

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If you’ve got some time check out my dude’s design blog TheDigitalArmory.  He’s a good dude and does really good work.

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Well, we finally wrapped up shooting for the “Radioinactive” music video on Monday night.  My job as a rapper is done, and now it is the hands of Bangland media to turn our vision into a reality, then turn that reality over to the good folks at Rhymesayers Entertainment.  Here’s some a few more pics from the last part of the shoot for you all to check out.  I’m pretty excited about this one getting finished.

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Lately I’ve been wanting to get into photography more as a hobby.  While I’m pretty new to it, I took a few that I’m happy with.  Here’s a few pics of the studio taken with my Kodak Easyshare c613 camera (the ultra-cheap $100 joints).  Click on the image to enlarge it, then click on it again to reduce it’s size:

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Jeah…

As many of you know, the ball has officially started rolling for my sophomore solo album Adventures in Counter-Culture to be released very soon on Rhymesayers Entertainment. Part of that process involves shooting music videos, so last week the director Bangland Media (who directed, shot, and edited the “Cold Out Here” music video) started working on the video for a song called “Radioinactive”. On Monday we visited the Abstract Rude show and on Wednesday we visited the Eyedea & Abilities show to capture some cutaway footage for it. Some of you may have been there and may have seen the camera rollin while we were hanging out.  On Sunday we shot some more inside stuff and I’m really happy with how everything’s starting to look so far.

We’re also shooting some footage inside as well, and here are a few screen shots:

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Here are some shots my dude took of us actually filming the video:

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Adventures in Counter-Culture coming soon…

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