I hit the Hip-Hop Shop show that TopR and Quest performed at this past Friday evening. It was a private deal with free beer ad wine, and a really comfortable environment — the space was obviously live/work, and I’m pretty sure TopR rocked some dude’s living/dining room — but there was this strange Big Tobacco element to the whole thing. When we got to the address, there were people at the front door checking IDs and taking names, then giving those in attendance drink tickets with packs of cigarettes. So in order to get drinks, you had to have drink tickets and to get drink tickets, you had to take the smokes. Pretty interesting. Even more interesting: the art on the walls in the space was all Camel-branded paintings of various style. I felt like I was being aggressively marketed to. It was really weird. Even weirder were the stocky guys all wearing bluetooth headsets, turtlenecks, sport coats, apparently doing security. They were so out of place, people were talking about them, making jokes about the government using the Men In Black to keep tabs on underground rap shows, or how Big Tobacco had hired mercenaries to make sure we took the cigarettes.
Quest was already spinning when we got there. He wasn’t getting too crazy with the scratching — he’s one of the world’s best — but he was throwing down the dopest mix set I’ve heard in a long, long time, and tossing in some turntable trickery in a fashion that was neither phoned-in nor too wildly technical, nor a step out of line with the flow of the music in the mix. Strictly a rap music set, there were a lot of old school drops, and Quest got things hot enough to incite a b-boy circle, three or four dudes who got down in turns for about 20 minutes.
TopR and his hype man, the producer of his latest album The Marathon of Shame, Dick Nasty joined Quest and performed a tight set of new and old Top Ramen classics.
When we left, there were unopened packs of Camel cigarettes all over the place.
Hit the Mission Bar after the Camel rap show, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night drinking heavily with a friend who was celebrating his retirement from his days as a bartender. Things got ugly.