grandwizards

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.