so i landed in shenzhen and i had a hotel already lined up for me, courtesy of b-boy glacial of tripline crew. its pretty crazy how i come across these people- basically a long chain of coincidences and good luck. but yeah, he's was the organizer of the battle, and apparently the organizer of many other dance events in shenzhen (he's got another one coming up on the 27th that i'll probably go to too). anyway, i told him how i was coming out for the battle but had a gigantic luggage since i was moving out of shanghai at the same time, so he hooked me up. good thing, since all i've heard about shenzhen is bad things. lilian's roommate's friend was from shenzhen and she was telling me about people getting murdered, people kidnapping tourists and leaving them out in the middle of nowhere, and all this crazy stuff. so i was a bit paranoid to say the least, but everything worked out. it was a bit of a shock to leave shanghai - because in shanghai you can sometimes forget you're in china - and shenzhen seemed like a very "chinese" city. but yeah, the battle was a 3 v 3 b-boy battle and a 2 v 2 popping battle. there were about 40 b-boy crews participating and maybe about 20 popping crews, mostly from this southern part of china (macau, hong kong, guangzhou, and shenzhen).
i managed to tape almost all of it, even though you weren't allowed to film in the club. it was a good thing i bought a fish eye lens the day before i left so i could capture all the action without really having to point my camera at the action (since i was being undercover about it). so that's exciting... i'm going to have a bunch of minidv tapes full of footage by the end of the year i hope :). i think this is the first b-boy battle i've actually attended (all these firsts in china!), i've of course watched plenty of battles on video tape so i was prepared for the whole thing. but the battle took about 5-6 hours! i missed about 2 hours of it because i was walking around the streets trying to find the stupid club (i forgot to write the address down... and when i got the address no one could help me because there was no street number or anything. oh and about street numbers, in some cities they don't even go in order! and to further complicate things the numbers on one side of the street are totally unrelated to the numbers on the other side. i don't understand...) but i finally made it there and probably didn't miss much. to get an idea of what the place was like and how the battle went, here's a clip of the previous check da skillz battle, it was a really nice venue and a very nice dancefloor.
so the battle. it was mainly a b-boy battle, i think the popping battle was there to kinda break it up. you could tell the crowd was there for the b-boys because whenever it was time for the popping battles, the crowd (or maybe just the b-boys) would kinda crowd the dance floor space and not really respect the poppers. i think a common misconception is that b-boying is harder than popping because it involves so much acrobatic things - but popping is hard in its own way - isolation and having clean, hard hits takes years of practice... but i'll save the details. in fact, i haven't really tried b-boying yet so i can't even make a personal judgement. anyway, i was really surprised to see a lot of the poppers and some of the b-boys lip syncing all of the lyrics to these great random funk songs (which embarrased me for not knowing them). rhythm attack (hong kong) was probably my favorite crew, as they were really dancing to the music, they knew every little breakdown and every little sound so they could really dance out the music. this made me really happy since a lot of the dancers in shanghai don't really listen to music - which i don't really understand at all. why learn to dance if you don't love to listen to music? i think a lot of people here just get into it because they think it looks cool - i've heard the same things about some of the dancers in guangzhou.... oh it was also good to see a crew of b-girls too! i didn't meet any b-girls in shanghai so its good to know that they're out there. the biggest flaw i saw in almost all the crews (b-boys and poppers) was that they all seem to be battling the floor, they hardly looked at their opponents when they danced... so i guess the battle lacked intensity at times since there was no real like personal beef going on between the crews.
i thought it was funny that there seems to be a universal b-boy language. there are two movements that translate into words "cock" and "bite". the "cock" movement is basically an alternative to the middle finger/fuck you, you just act like you're holding a gigantic cock and you point it at whoever you're telling to fuck off. the other is "bite" which is making a chomping movement with your arms folded in front of you to show that whatever move your opponent just did was bitten (copied) from you or somewhere else. both of these movements were used quite often in the battle and you can see them in battles in probably any country haha. ahhhhh the universal language of dance.... ;)
afterwards i had dinner with b-boy glacial and b-boy ronnie (full force/super crew), a really down-to-earth guy. he's pretty famous in the b-boy world, he came over from the states to judge the battle. he's currently working for the maxim (magazine) party tour, he flies out to different cities each week to perform at the beginning of these parties and he's supposed to get people to dance. i started a conversation with him and he was really interested in what i was doing and gave me a lot of respect. i talked to him a little about doing hip-hop as a job (i always end up asking people about this) while it is a dream come true, he says the bad thing about it is that it doesn't make you want to practice. stanley (dragon dance studios) also said this, he doesn't perform anymore - he makes all the other dancers in the studio perform - because doing too many performances doesn't let you enjoy dancing as much, making you lazy about practicing. he doesn't regret it though, he's taking time off from school to ride out his career as a b-boy and will go back whenever he sees fit. oh he also might be a character in the next release of b-boy - a ps2 game about breakdancing (trailer) haha. i got to talk to him about his opinion on b-boys in asia since he's also been to korea and japan to judge battles - in short he broke it down that chinese b-boys are catching up but they need to work on consistency, korean b-boys are all power moves (those crazy acrobatic moves)... but are kinda moving away from hip-hop (he said most of them don't even listen to hip-hop) and japanese b-boys are pretty well-rounded. after talking about hip-hop we somehow got into a conversation about dreams and lucid dreaming... it was becdause he was telling me to journal and he started talking about how he keeps a dream journal because he has lucid dreams... but yeah - it was a pretty crazy random conversation.
i was supposed to hang out with them the next day, but they ended up waking up really late since we didn't leave til about 4am. i had to check out at 12 so i just hopped on the train to guangzhou which is about an hour or two away by train depending on what train you take.
i get to guangzhou with my huge luggage - i manage to just walk right past the people that scout out people with big luggages (because they'll charge you if you're over a certain weight). well someone was trying to call me to come aside to weigh my luggage but i just kept walking and he yelled at me for a bit, but i just acted like i didn't understand and didn't turn around- so he gave up. i kinda realized that if you just walk through or in anywhere acting like you're supposed to be there, it almost always works. i got into many clubs free just kinda walking straight in without hesitating so i didn't have to pay cover. haha. ahh china brings out the cheap scammer in you. :)
to be continued... ------------------------------ check da skillz 3 pictures (sorry about the quality, was holding the video camera up with one hand, trying to snap pictures with the other) tripline crew (check da skillz 3 winner)
well things worked out for the most part. i dunno why the itinerary online said it only took an hour to get from shanghai to shenzhen by plane- maybe i just read the thing wrong.. but it took like 3.5 hours to fly here. i was confused because i kept waking up and i was like why aren't we there yet? shenzhen taxi's are ridiculously expensive- they start at 12.50 and go up by 2.40! (i thought shanghai was expensive at 10 going up by 2.... because in beijing it starts at 8 going up by either 1.3 or 1.6). so i took the airport bus into the city and took a cab to the hotel. checked in, the room cost $30, but i was supposed to share it with bboys from macau... but we got back to the hotel after the battle at 2:45- bboy glacial (the guy from shenzhen) reserved two rooms for us and i checked into one. so when we got here all the rooms were taken- there were like 6 people... so they decided all to go get a massage and there's a room where you can just like sleep in for the night- so i got stuck with this room to myself, which kinda pisses me off because its so expensive. meh. but the battle went well- 3v3 bboy battle and 2v2 popping battle, i managed to tape almost all of it even though you weren't allowed to tape :). tripline crew (shenzhen) took the bboy battle (2nd place rhythm attack [hk]) don't remember the name of the popping crew. anyway, it took me like an hour walking around trying to find the stupid club though, the map i had put the club on the exact opposite end of a street, so i was really mad because i showed up like 1.5 hours late, but its ok- i probably didn't miss much and it saved me from taping useless stuff. a famous bboy from the states was judging it- bboy ronnie from full force/super crew (i actually haven't heard of him but i'm not super into the bboy scene. but he's a pretty big deal). i had dinner with him and glacial afterwards- had a really good conversation with him, he was totally into my project and everything- he's currently dancing for maxim magazine- they throw parties across the us so he dances at all of them... but yeah we were talking about dreams, journals, dream journals, and lucid dreaming and stuff like that. it was a pretty crazy conversation. so yeah. i don't know what i'm going to do tomorrow- either go straight to guangzhou or hang out with glacial and ronnie. it depends on whether or not i can just check out and leave my luggage in storage here. i'll wake up and figure it out i guess. ok, need to get some rest.
so i made my first big move. bye bye shanghai baby! it treated me well, but it wasn't everything i imagined it to be.. or wanted it to be for that matter, but i'll get into that later. these past three months have gone by quickly, which makes me a bit nervous because before i know it i'll be back in the states and going off to medical school!
so a wrap-up of shanghai. the dancers there were good, generally i have found that the dance element of the hip-hop culture in china is the most advanced out of the "four elements" (emcee, b-boy, dj, graffiti) of hip-hop. the dancers here aren't very far behind as far as skill level goes, and they even manage to pick up the new dances that are being developed in the united states (i.e. the chickenhead, krumping, etc.).. the wonders of the internet! in fact, tommy the clown and the krumpers will be in hong kong on nov. 14th (hopefully i make it out. as there will be one of the best beatboxer/"multivocalists" from england there too - killa kela). anyway so there were three studios in shanghai: dragon dance studio, carsten, and new idol. i only went to dragon dance studio, why? carsten well the dancers from carsten would usually find work through dragon dance studio anyway so i'd run into them and the new idol dance studio is one of those places that work to make superstars. yep they have superstar training schools here. it seems lots of asian-americans come back to their homelands looking to get big, so they train their voice, train to dance, and train to act and stuff (superstars in asia do everything, even if they suck at it - maybe its because the old opera stars had to be proficient in everything: singing, acrobatics, dance... maybe its a stretch but whatever). so the closest to hip-hop they got was hip-pop, and that consisted of a bunch of guys with crazy ridiculous haircuts doing mtv asia choreography. not my scene. dragon dance studio was good, i took locking, popping, and house classes there- for some reason i never got to the breakin' class, not sure why i never had the desire to go. so yes, i think i've improved as a dancer and if i'm disciplined enough to practice a lot, i'll be quite the dancer by the end of the year - which i hope is the case!
as i said, i did manage to conduct two interviews with two of the most prominient people running the show in shanghai. dj v-nutz and stanley (the founder/owner of dragon dance studio). both are native shanghainese, both have been into hip-hop for quite sometime, but they both have very different stories. one comes from a military family the common theme of the conversations i've been having with people is that they do hip-hop because it gives them freedom. freedom to choose what they want to do, freedom from their daily realities - whether it be the constant pressure from family and school or the pressure of being poor and in a rough neighborhood. i think maybe for me, it gave me the freedom to be myself. but that's another whole essay that i haven't even thought about yet. so i'll just leave it at that and continue. so what is so attractive about the music to these people? it seems like the only music that taps into that seemingly natural reflex in your neck. it's got that rhythm that'll make you bob your head. its the rhythm that moves the soul. stanley even said in a club once, you can tell if someone's a hip-hop person or not in a hip-hop club by seeing if they are bobbing their head or not. and it's true for the most part. i even wrote about this head bobbing thing in my watson proposal because it really seems to be a natural reflex, with hip-hop music being one of those little reflex-testing hammers. they also got into how hip-hop is great because if you really get into it it is a gateway into so much music if you let it take you there... funk, soul, r&b, disco, jazz, house, reggae, everything that shaped hip-hop into what it is now. and the cool thing is, that you can come at it from different angles- like dj v-nutz is into funk from a djing aspect and is hoping to start producing some new funk... i'm getting into funk from a dance perspective- since i'm really into the funk styles of dance (locking and popping) and maybe from a producing perspective (a lot a lot alot of the beats today are constructed from samples of old funk/jazz music).
so yeah. the hip-hop scene in shanghai is getting off its feet. there's virtually no graffiti though it seems. apparently there is some on the outskirts of shanghai, but i never ventured out there to see it for myself- so that's just hearsay. the mc's.... well, i covered that in a previous email of mine. it's kind of funny though, like there's a crew called the "poom poom crew" - i'm not sure if poom poom means anything in chinese or where they got this name from.. but its quite a funny name if you know what a poom poom is. at least underneath all the bling they latched onto one positive aspect of hip-hop, teamwork. NONE of the mc's are solo artists, they are all part of a crew of somesort and all perform together. this is also seen in the dancing circle- i did not see anyone really do their own thing. i was talking to this guy, adam (mr. stokes, a dj from the states) about this teamwork thing and told me he interviewed a bunch of students from the top schools in china for some research or something- they all basically told him they work on everything in groups, they all help each other and work together on their homework (aww sounds like swat), so maybe this is a cultural thing (although most of the people i knew there doing hip-hop dropped out of school). but yeah, you know the doing everything for the team ideology is pretty strong here. anyway, since i left, another club is pushing a thursday hip-hop night with mc battles - they used to do that in pegasus but they stopped doing that. so it really boils down to the dancers and the djs. v-nutz is working hard on the scene, working to bring big names to shanghai to try to expand people's understanding of hip-hop, he tries to slip in some good underground/old school tunes during his weekly commercial gig, and he has a crew of djs called aminosoul- which is a few shanghainese djs and a few japanese djs. stanley is working to get more people into dancing and planning more events for the dancers.
oh, another random observation i've made is that china seems to separate music culture from all other cultures. for example in the US skateboarding culture is often associated with punk music and hip-hop music, basketball culture is often associated with hip-hop/rap music, but in china this is not the case. music is on its own, it doesn't seem to be associated with any subcultures... so it's interesting to find that some of the skaters here listen to all the cheesey chinese pop music or metal. (metal is reallllly big here in china. i remember walking into cd stores in beijing and there would be walls of obscure metal bands). i did read in some magazine that a us basketball camp was trying to push a bit of the hip-hop/rap culture while promoting/holding their camp in china (basketball is really big here now, especially now with yao ming) - but i don't think it worked as in the minds of the people here, these cultures are separate and totally unrelated.
before i left shanghai, i had the pleasure to see one of the legendary great dj's... the grand wizard roc raida. yes his title is actually "grand wizard" - this title is given to only the greatest of the great- for example, the guy that invented scratching (grand wizard theodore) is one of the grand wizards. this kind of proves the fact that hip-hop heads are actually big nerds. i mean they probably got this grand wizard thing from dungeons and dragons... and how many people are named after comic book characters in hip-hop? yeah that's right, they're all nerds too. haha. anyhow, in high school i used to watch this guy doing crazy beat juggles with body tricks (beat juggling is when a dj takes two copies of (usually) the same record and switches back and forth between them - either creating a loop by replaying the same section over again, doubling up the beat, or creating an entirely new beat - example of dj klever beat juggling @ 2:00 and 3:30. body tricks are just tricks you do with your body while beat juggling- for example stopping the record with your elbow, spinning around, juggling with your back turned, reaching under your leg to move the fader- basically its like basketball tricks, only for djs). i got to hang out for a bit with him afterwards and he was a chill guy, filling me in on a bit of what's going on in new york and some djs that seemed to have fell off the face of the earth. oh, the aforementioned mr. stokes from the states opened up for him and did a crazy set of old school, baile funk, jiggy rap, and some random things like metro area. wish he did a regular party gig like that. that night i also met an australian guy that is currently in tokyo. i met him through a forum about b-boying- he has traveled throughout asia and basically met up with hip-hop heads wherever he went. he's interested in starting a street label in china for hip-hop heads and skaters, so he was in shanghai for that night checking to see if he was ready to move to china. sooo i've got a good hook up in tokyo now :).
so yes shanghai shanghai. it treated me pretty well, but it was kinda impersonal. the people there seem to be in general very distant and not very open - and there seems to be an air of "if i'm not going to get anything out of talking to you then you're not worth my time" attitude. granted there were exceptions and there were people that were down-to-earth. but i got the feeling that people seemed to be caught up in their daily routine and don't like to be bothered. the stereotype of shanghainese people are that they are extremely concerned with money matters and the women are stereotyped to be fussy gold diggers. so i experienced a little of that. even when i would talk to random people- like people that sell food or dvds that aren't from the shanghai area- the would always ask me what i thought about shanghai people- and then they would launch into a rant about how they don't really like them. so at least i felt like i wasn't the only one- not that i hated shanghainese people or anything.
i left shanghai at the end of october and flew to shenzhen, the city right across the border from hong kong. i was lucky enough to find an airplane ticket from shanghai straight there for around $50, since it costs about the same to take a sleeper train to guangzhou which is an hour away from shenzhen. the train would've taken 24 hours and i've already had that experience before so i decided to pass on it :).
2 more days til i'm out of here. damn i have to pack.
dinner with shige, fortune, and v-nutz. had good hangzhou food. dongpo rou is quite possibly one of the best chinese dishes ever. its just a small square piece of pork with a gigantic piece of fat on top of it, boiled in this sweet soy sauce and oil. gary put it well, "eating this is like listening to funk music, its the same feeling (of absolute wonderfulness)". i really need to learn how to make this... actually maybe its good that i don't know how i would get so fat.
the interview with v-nutz went well. if i do actually make a documentary it'll be funny because during part of the interview his cat is sitting on top of the sofa licking his head while he's answering questions. he was messing around on the turntables, it made me miss them a lot... i was too apprehensive to ask to get on them and embarass myself since i haven't touched a set of turntables in... almost 3 years probably. maybe in guangzhou though. :)
i did it again, spent a bunch of money on cds (actually maybe the equivalent of 2 cds in the states). but i guess it balances itself out since i was out there to buy a certain type of tea for a guy in the states. he's paying me to buy tea for him and send it back since its a tea only sold at the jade buddha temple in shanghai. it's called 阿麻茶 , its apparently a green tea from yunan. the really interesting thing about it is, the tea is naturally really sweet without adding any sort of sugar. its quite refreshing and relaxing, so i bought myself a little box.
but anyway, by suggestion of one of the forum members on smartshanghai.com i went to a place near the jade buddha temple, No.1505 Xi Kang Rd., cross road Yi Chang Rd. it's an electronics market, but on the third floor they sell a bunch of original (原版) cds. so there's a few different types that they sell, ones that have holes in the cds, ones that have cuts, and totally intact cds... all these types in their original packaging or without the actual cd case (but the booklet and the cd insert). prices range from 5-30rmb a disc- classical music, jazz music, and cds in their case go for the higher prices usually (i guess its a "being cultured" tax haha). there are a few places around where i live that sell these cds, but for higher prices unless you spend some time haggling or are a regular. my cd man is the guy on shanxi nan lu and chang le lu but he pisses me off because i still have to haggle with him even though i've bought over 100 cds from him (he originally charged me 8 kuai and he's done some shady stuff sometimes like putting a cd in another cd's packaging to say its a 2cd or putting random ass cds like the olsen's twins cd in a james brown cd case (boy i was maaaad), etc.) and there's a small shop just down the street on ruijin yi lu that sells the cds without cases for 5rmb, but they usually don't budge from the standard 25-30rmb for a classical/jazz cd. then there's people walking around the streets with boxes of cds, i unfortunately only have run into these people once, but managed to get cds in original cases from them for 7rmb. anyway, this new place i went to proved to be worth the trip out there, haggling was much easier, and you could even get some cds in their cases for 5rmb (63 cents) not bad.
this is one thing i managed to find cheaper in shanghai than in beijing (and i hear guangzhou is a bit more expensive, but that might be because this expat i spoke to didn't know what he was doing). so naturally i am stocking up. i think i already set about 100 cds back home with mandy, and i think i just bought another 30 more today. some of the cds have been mainstream rap cds, as i think in a few years i'll probably forget what i was listening to and usually a hard drive with all my mp3s crashes so i have nothing to show for it.... so i'm trying to leave a cd trail for myself. my parents are going to kill me :).
so some of the more interesting stuff i got are:
tomasz stanko - selected recordings ECM meshell ndegeocello - cookie: the anthropological mixtape janet jackson - the velvet rope air - premiers symptomes, 10 000hz legend, moon safari, talkie walkie tito puente - the complete rca recordings vol. 2 brand new heavies - we won't stop best of classical chill out 6cd (the tracklisting didn't look so bad, so hey for $7 why not - not sure what "classical chillout" actually is) jamiroquai - a funk odyssey hank mobley - the flip asian dub foundation - community music nobody - soulmates boysetsfire - tomorrow come today (wonder why this is here, i also saw a sensefield and a cave in cd crazy hm?)
i'm also trying to broaden my knowledge of good music, currently trying to explore reggae since i never really did and well that's where hip-hop came from too, so i should at least know a bit about it right?
well i feel accomplished. :) i managed to find someone to take over my lease so i'll be getting my security deposit back woo. ordered my plane ticket to shenzhen. so i'm leaving shanghai now, it's treated me well, but it wasn't everything i was looking for. hopefully i can find the stuff i'm looking for in guangzhou. i'm going to shenzhen to check out a b-boy/popping battle organized by the tripline crew. exciting, exciting... the first real dance battle i'll get to see here. after spending the night in shenzhen i'll take a train to guangzhou (which is only an hour away) and try to set up shop there. i know a dj there named dave who's part of the hip-hop group deerna/chan, said he'd help me find a place to stay for awhile so that's good. i'm going to try to not sign a lease so i can get up and leave when i see fit, especially since there's hong kong and shenzhen nearby.. might want to live there instead or maybe even go back to beijing and stay for a month or something. but yeah, a new leg of my adventure will begin soon. i'm excited and nervous...
i got my first interview done, i interviewed stanley, the founder of dragon dance studio. i was nervous at first for some unknown reason, but i got some good stuff taped and got some of the things i've been thinking about answered. i wish i had some footage of him dancing, i just have him doing some locking at the DMC competition but it was taped on my digital camera so the quality isn't all that good. maybe i'll try and make it back here in march or something when they have their big studio performance just to tape some stuff. but yeah, after the interview i had dinner with stanley, dongdong, dapigao, xiaofei, and joy at the xinjiang restaurant next to the studio... they were asking me all these questions about hip-hop in america so they got to interview me a little haha. oh, i also got about 40 full videos of house, popping, and locking dance styles, so that's exciting (even though i had to pay quite a bit for them : \ but its all in the name of the project and to improve my own dancing of course haha).
so i'm going to interview v-nutz on wednesday which should be interesting... maybe i should schedule a few more since i have the time and more interviews and footage wouldn't hurt. problem is i have no more room on my hard drive and i'm going to start accumulating a bunch of minidv tapes. i think i'm going to have to invest in a large external drive (a 3.5 in. one since the notebook drives are way expensive... and i need something like 300 gigs of storage for music and videos). i'm just scared it might crash (since i always seem to have this luck) and i'll lose everything.. so i need to spend sometime archiving stuff to dvd and send it back home. why do i never have enough storage space...
just something funny. the woman i buy my minidv tapes from was really excited to see me today. she was like, i haven't seen you in a long time! i wanted to ask you something, "you work in shanghai right?", to avoid the long conversation about what i'm actually doing here, i just say "yes". so she excitedly leans forward and asks me, "do you have a girlfriend?" oh no, she's going to try to hook me up with her friend or her daughter or something, i think. i answer "i have a girlfriend". her brow furrows and disappointingly says, "i wanted to introduce you to my daughter, she's very beautiful but she thinks all the shanghai guys are bad. i think you're a very good person, you'd get along with her well... and if you don't like her my friends have pretty daughters too" and she goes on to tell me about how she works in the bank and how nice she thinks i am. i just nod and smile. haha i thought the whole situation was funny, whose mom finds random people she meets to introduce to their daughter? i mean usually its through someone you know that happens to know someone else so at least its a bit more legit. guess its getting pretty cutthroat here. its going to get crazy though, since there's the one-child law and chinese culture favors boys (so people get abortions if they find out they have a girl).. so there's going to be a lot of guys and very little girls... it'll be interesting.
anyway. the grand wizard roc raida was here last night. hip-hop is a bunch of nerds i swear, i mean what other subculture has titles like "grand wizard"? i bet the people that created these titles were dungeons and dragon nerds back in the day. but yeah, grand wizard is a title give to very few djs, most of which are the pioneers of the art form (i.e. grand wizard theodore, the guy who created scratching)... so its a big deal. anyway, roc raida is basically the man of bodytricks, bodytricks are different tricks you do using your body while djing, for example stopping the record with your nose, elbow, head... spinning around, beat juggling with your back turned, switching the fader with your hand under your leg, etc. i guess you just have to see it to understand it. you might know him, he's part of the X-ecutioners which did a track with Linkin Park a few years ago. but yeah, the night was pretty incredible.
much respect to mr. stokes. his track selection was crazy (even better than raida's in my opinion) hit stuff from organized konfusion, mr. oizo - flat beat, metro area, janes addiction, baile funk, baltimore club, m.i.a., etc. and people were dancing- granted the crowd wasn't all the pegasus regulars but some of them were getting down... so i think something like this may be possible without a internationally known dj. anyway, probably the best hip-hop set i've heard here.
i don't see why people would give up on raida early, he was playing lots of great tracks that were "crowd friendly" - that you could get down to whether you're a hardcore hip-hop head or just a casual listener. i don't think he gave anyone a reason, even the people that were there to see his skills, to leave early. and i guess raida proved everyone that thinks that you can't juggle correctly with the serato dead wrong. he killed that shit. nice to hear some stuff that i haven't heard in awhile like jeru da damaja and such.
respect to v-nutz for putting this together and trying to push the scene further.
oh yeah, upcoming dj LJ, did four bar trade offs with raida at the end of his set. pretty sick. i think he's moving to shanghai, so watch out for this guy.
