ATCQ

Today's post was gonna be about how i feel as a black man in chicago. there's a daily pattern that i notice that definately irks me but i will let that pass today because i was blessed yesterday to witness some greatness.

At the end of the day yesterday as i was scanning my bulk mail to make sure nothing of worth had been chucked in with the usual trash asking me to refinance my loan and get my you know what enlarged i noticed an email from the House of Blues.

Now I am a subscriber but really they send too much stuff so i relegated it to the bulk mail and check it only when i feel like it. The email was a quick scan of their upcoming concerts. Now what did i see at the top? The LL(Cool J) concert had been cancelled. Now usually i wouldn't are cause much as i like LL i think he's fallen off a little bit and it's a good concert to go to to see the ladies..cause they definately love Cool James.(Hmmm, why wasn't I ging to this??) Anyway LL had been cancelled and replaced by "the creme de la creme" A Tribe Called Quest!!!!!!

Huh!! What!!??? i was in a state. they had broken up 6 years ago and though I heard of a possible reunion that news had been announced ages ago and there had been no follow up. So I was shocked. Tribe are the ultimate hip hop group. they are an integral part of teh soundtrack of my life and can definately be looked at as one of the"ties that bind" for two groups of friends of mine. Just amazing. The days when hip hop was associated with class and intelligence instead of bling and shakin rumps. they were hall of famers by their first album and they put out 5.

Anyway i had to go and looked to buy my tickets via ticket master..yet it wasn't possible. Tickets couldn't be purchased online. I didn't know if they were sold out or just not seling online so I tried calling. I couldn't get through...was on hold for awhile. To make matters worse it was the end of the day and my ride was waiting. and though i work near the HOB I had catch a train home so i could get my car to come back into the city from my suburban confines. So i went home and started making phone calls. Cause i knew that there was no way i could keep this to myself.

So as I was on the train i called a friend of mine. She was excited but caught in a quandry. She had a presentation the next day and a quiz on wed that hadn't studid for. But again it was Tribe. she was torn. So she said to call another friend of ours to serve as the tiebreaker. he took less than a second to say yes and on the way we were. she was still at work..which is close to mine and she also actually lives in the city so she had no problem going down and pickin up the tickets.

We were set..show started at 8:30/ doors opened at 8 and that was the decided meeting time. Which actually ended up beng more like 8:15 cause parking was not kind. When we got in the setup was a little different than usual. there was the normal DJ on stage but the show was being sponsored by Salem Cigarettes and Enyce clothing. The stage had an elevated platform on it with these two female hip hop dancer "chicken headin" to the beat. After a bit they came down and then we were presented with a fashion show from Enyce. not exactly what we came for but except for the annoying male models who were trying too hard to be hard there was some nice things to see so i wasn't too bothered.

When that was over i got a bit of an age check. Funkmaster Flex came on to do a set. Now Flex is oen of the worlds most famous hip hop dj's who comes from NYC. He was trying to get the crowd up for Tribe by playing some serious old skool classics. Half the kids in there didn't know the songs. They looked like deer in headlights at times. I was like how do you not know this...
But to be fair he also could have pulled out a couple of better known tunes. Cause when he was finished the previous Dj dropped some stuff you wish he had played.

Then we were told there was one more special guest before Tribe came on. No one else had been mentioned so we didn't know who to expect but we were very pleasantly surprised as the this tall, thin, curly haired white girl walked on stage with a violin. It was Mari Ben Ari of kanye west fame and she killed it. They played different songs and she would use the violin to either do beats or be the voice. Just great stuff. The place had been a little quiet before but after her it was hyped. Then they introduced Tribe and it erupted.

And it wasn't just 3 members of tribe that walked on stage. For those in the know...Mike Jarobi was there too. They did all the classics..and just had people singing to every song. Bonita Applebum, Hot Sex on a Platter, Relax, Buggin out they did it all. The only bad thing was that House of Blues has some union issues that stop the show at 11:30 during the weekdasy so we only got an hour and a half of Tribe. Whatever the case it's the second best concert I've been to...behind the mighty mos and talib who have taken the torch from Tribe of course.

well take it easy all,

carrots,

K