October 5, 2007

Archived: Taking it West Coast

Cali Agents – Just When You Thought It Was Safe: Cali Agents is Rasco + Planet Asia. They hail from California, as you might expect. I post this track even after Planet Asia’s Fresno rap crew, Skool Yard, did one of the flat-out worst shows I’ve ever seen at the Metro back in 2002. They got the lights turned out on them multiple times, people were throwing bottles...



People Under the Stairs – San Francisco Knights: But then People Under The Stairs came out and rocked it. Live hip-hop when you’re working just with DJ + MCs can be a tough thing to pull off, you kinda need to get the crowd unreasonably excited for what they’re actually seeing, but People Under The Stairs did that. (For the record, Common is also really good.) This track is an all-time SF jam.



Del Tha Funky Homosapien – Corner Story: Del was the headliner of this show, the Cali Comm tour. By this point it was already 3am or something like that. I’m telling you, Skool Yard was painful. Anyway, Del sounded bad, and had zero stage presence, so we just thought he was sick. Seeing Hieroglyphics (Luke Vibert's fave) at this year’s Rock the Bells made me realize that Del’s voice just doesn’t sound that good live, and he actually has no stage presence. Del certainly makes up for it in the studio, though. Anyway I think we stuck it out that night, since we were young and sprightly. Now it's the 2k7 and I would have been long gone.

1 comment:

Ryan S said...

I saw Del in Detroit on my 18th birthday :) The thing I learned was: he has no stage presence BUT he is hella funny once he gets drunk. he flow improved too, and he got really boisterous and ranted about the Sega Genesis and Sega CD.

good stuff!