hiphop, self-promo, story-telling

Bumrush The Show – How to get on open mics 101

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Originally this blog was intended mainly as an outlet for me to brag about my undertakings. Along the way I somehow forgot to go for the gusto, so this is the first in a line of posts about accomplishments in various fields I’ve reached over the years. The first entry is about my sharing microphones with famous rap-stars.

As you readers may or may not know, I’ve been rapping for a number of years here in Denmark, and freestyling for almost as many. Yet it wasn’t until I moved to Copenhagen, I found out how easy it is to get on stage during rapshows. You don’t need to put out an album, you don’t need promotion, god donut, you don’t even need to be booked. All you have to do is wave your hand and slamdance your ass to the stage as soon as the rapper shouts “Any MC’s in the house?!” I used to think it was kinda lame to represent, but now I actually feel it’s obligatory to step up if you can. It can really be quite a fresh touch on the show, I particularly remember Nappion from Aarhus rhyming with Mad Skillz, this Icelandic rapper really impressing at a Common Sense show, and recently this kid in front row doing a perfect Wu-verse with Method Man. Also, I can’t forget my girlfriend Mismarie serving competition at a memorable Bahamadia show. But hey, this was supposed to be about me! So here’s a list of rappers whose show I’ve bumrushed.

Tha Alkaholiks: My first attempt to get on stage and it sucked. By the time I got up there, it turned out it was a drinking contest and some chick had taken my place.

Erick Sermon: This was actually the most fun. 2 years ago Erick Sermon was booked for a show with legendary underground heroes Ultramagnetic MC’s and one hit wonders Fanny Pack. Naturally only Erick and the P (as in Pack, not Parrish) show up. So Erick does his show and it’s pretty good, especially “React”, “Music” and whatever EPMD material he did, but then he asks if there are any rappers in the house. The first dude on stage is actually Bukki from the legendary Danish funk-rap band U.R.D. Somehow Erick rejects this guy (woulda been great hearing him again) and instead chooses me. Little does he know, it’s my birthday, and yes I’ve been drinking Bacardi like it’s my…forget it. Anyways I do 8 bars where I manage to insult Sermon and rhyme: “I represent for the culture, everybody knows we only showed up to hear Ultra”. after that Erick quickly snatched the mic away and looked at me angrily with his slightly lazy green eyes.

Tim Dog: Happened at Rust I think this summer. Tim Dog’s show was hot, everybody sang along with “Fuck Compton” like they had wrote the shit, and when he asked for MC’s ain’t too many dared ‘step to him’ (if you know what I mean). So I get up and do a quick freestyle, and since it’s for Tim Dog I rap a little about his history and all. While you may think Tim Dog is this angry unfuckwithable character it turned out he was really humble and gave me applaus and shouted: “That was nice. My man came off the dome!” He also signed autographs as you may have read so that whole night was smooth. There’s a review of it here.

Funkdoobiest: This was during their show in Vega. Apparently Tomahawk Funk hasn’t been part of the show for ages, so it was down to Sun Doobie and DJ Ralph The Funky Mexican. Sun Doobie was great, he was real skinny but would do Hulk Hogan poses flexing his non-existing muscles between songs, and Ralph The Funky Mexican blended electro with DJ Ugerløse-type powerscratch at all chances. Fresh! Sad thing was they only had like a half hour show, so their hypeman tried to get people from the crowd to rhyme – and he got me. At that point Sun Doobie had left the stage, but I did manage to talk about Ralph’s haircut and other stuff…
A lot of other stuff as a matter of fact. I was drunk off of Hennessey at the time, and I think I kept going way past the intended timeslot. Still fun to have been rhyming with the Soul Assassins…Almost. Read review here.

Last Emperor: He actually invited me on stage. He didn’t have a DJ with him and he needed someone to pause and fast-forward his CD for the show. So while I didn’t get to rhyme with Emp, he rhymed about me, something to the effect of: “I got my man on the beat, and his name is Pete”. Yeah Emp! While that was great in itself we also played a mean game of table fussball making it a truly memorable experience.

So that’s the list of mics shared with greatness, and if you wanna follow suit it’s real easy:

First of all you have to be fairly close to the stage around 35 minutes into the show, ‘cause they’ll do the mic either then or after the encore.

Second, have a rhyme prepared if you don’t want to freestyle.

And third, make sure you’re drunk enough to not freeze up, but sober enough to remember a line or two.

observations, the simpsons

Breaking news: Bart Simpson is a Scientologist!

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Yeah that’s right, the radical, ‘don’t have a cow man’, ‘eye curumba’ El Barto is a member of L Ron Hubbard’s church of Scientology. This may not be news to the American readers (assuming there are any) but in oblivious little Denmark, this piece of information sure hasn’t been shared much. The deal is this, Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson (yes Bart is voiced by a 40-something woman, get over it) has been a member of Scientology for years. You can read an interview in which she comments on it here.

What’s kinda nuts about it, is that while The Simpsons has been Bible-bashing, Quaran-crashing and Tora-torching for ages, there have hardly been any mentions of Scientology. There was a show called “The Joy of Sect” where an L Ron Hubbard like character brainwashes America’s favorite dysfunctional family, but that’s about it. Unless you count dubious remarks like Reverend Love Joy calling the band Iron Butterfly >>I. Ron Butterfly, or Apu complaining: “Oh, who needs the infinite compassion of Genisha, when I have Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman staring at me with their dead eyes!”One of the more subtle comments could be when Lisa and Bart are trying to explain to Side Show Bob he’s merely playing second fiddle in a greater scheme:

Bart: “You were just Barlow’s lackey.”
Lisa: “You were Ronny to his Nancy!”
Bart: “Sonny to his Cher!”
Lisa: “Ringo to his rest of the Beatles!”

Ronny to his Nancy is of course a reference to former presidential couple Ronald and Nancy Reagan, but it could also be an inside joke hinting at L:Ron(ny) Hubbard and Nancy Cartwright.

In any case, even though I’m all for the freedom to pick your own religion, hobby, sexual orientation and so forth, I find it just a little eerie that the selfproclaimed “devil in a red shirt”, Bart Simpson is somehow related to Tom Cruise, John Travolta and all the other Scientologists secretly lurking whilst staring at our society…with their dead eyes!

observations, the simpsons

Homer Simpson sez: “MMMMM pizza!”

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Having a girlfriend rules. Having a girlfriend that buys me merchandise from The Simpsons is damn near garden of Eden. So it was only right to become overtly ecstatic at the joyous occation where I got this precious thingamagic:

The Homer Simpson pizza slicer, what an invention! When you slice the pizza Homer will say stuff like: “The most beautiful word in the English language: PIZZA!”, “When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza-pie – that’s amore!”, “PIZZA, if it tastes good, it must be good for you” and my personal favorite “Pizza meets the requirements of the five food groups – it even counts as a pie!”

Needless to say I cooked up a salami-pizza before noon and we got down to business! Now I just have to figure out how to get these Homer Simpson slippers my friend Morten Spotgun bought himself in Florida. Lucky fugger!

hiphop, observations

Fona gives hiphoppers the A-HA experience

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Now, before I go into my rant, let it be known that ever since Fona gave me a PSP and 5 games for rapping 15 minutes at a company party they’ve been AOK with me. But this simply will not stand. Sometimes, someone has to draw a line somewhere in the sand. This ain’t Nam, it ain’t even The Falklands and I’m not going to take it!

Imagine if you will, the mothers, fathers, uncles, grandparents and significant others in general out there wishing to buy presents for the hiphopper in the family. They get Fona’s ad-mag in the mail, and think, what an easy way to locate the perfect gift for the family black sheep. Naturally they look to the rap section – cheekily titled “rap julemusik”. Here we find 50 Cent, Jokeren, Outlandish, Gorillaz, LOC and… A-HA!?

That’s right, A friggin Ha of Take On Me fame are listed as rap?! Next thing you know Bent Fabric is jungle and Bing Crosby is grime?! I urge all the muthabloggers out there to go to Fona, and voice your complaint, so we can all avoid getting the A-HA Analogue album for X-mas.

To send you off on a pleasant vibe, here’s DJ Yoda’s remix of Take On Me from the How To Cut And Paste The 80’s mixtape!

observations, wrestling

Letter from Pat Patterson

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So a regular day at the office aka the room we’ve put the PC in. I’m checking my mail, nothing special. But then I find I’ve gotten a letter from non other than WWF’s very first Intercontinental Champion Pat Patterson.

Pat Patterson got the IC belt in a tournament held in Rio de Janeiro (actually they didn’t have a tournament, they just told the fans back home that, so they could hand out titles.)

He wrestled some classic matches against the likes of Ted Dibiase and a cage confrontation with Sgt Slaughter. He’s probably most famous though, for being a major force behind the scenes, where he’s worked as Vince Mcmahon‘s right hand man. Well, that and the fact that he’s extremely homosexual, hits on the young wrestlers and has a had a year-long relationship with the Brooklyn Brawler. What’d ol Pat want to talk about? Well as you can tell by this copy of the mail, he’s apparently become a spammer of sorts.

Oh well, we can’t all end our careers on a high-note.

hiphop, observations, wrestling

Mr. Perfect sez: “Rap Is Crap”!

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evig poesi rules













Fat Joe said it best once: “Rap is like the WWF”. This might explain why I love both, and can’t wait ’til someone famous says: “Rap and wrestling are like The Simpsons”. As the loyal Hip-Hop, The Simpsons & Wrestling muthabloggers out there might have noticed, wrestlers have used rap-gimmicks for years, so it came as somewhat of a shock when Mr. Perfect aka Curt Hennig flatout stated: “Rap is crap!”

The wrestler not only said this back in 1999, but along with a crew called The West Texas Rednecks (Curt himself was from Minnesota) recorded an entire song dedicated to rap being crappy with such memorable lines as:

“I like country music / I love country girls
I like Willie Nelson / and don’t forget about Merle
There’s only one thing that I hate
Cuz it’s a bunch of crap / I, I, I hate rap!”

Now you may think that an avid rapfan such as myself would have been offended by this song, but bare in mind that wrestling’s all about gimmicks and playing the role as best as you can. Add onto that, that at the time Perfect was fueding with a wrestling fraction called The No Limit soldiers led by Master P no less, and it’s pretty obvious which side I’m on. Yihaaaah! To their credit No Limit luckfully didn’t consist of Mystikal and Mia X getting into action, but skillful Mexican wrestlers such as Konnan and Rey Mysterio, but still, feel free to hate any kind of musical express that ends in what sounds like bowel movement. UUUUGGHHH!

For those of you not familiar with Curt Hennig he’s the son of ring-legend Larry The Axe Hennig, a 350 lbs bull-sized wrestler, known for giving Rowdy Roddy Piper his first match (which lasted all of 13 seconds) and roughing up a young version of The Road Warriors when they refused to sell opponents’ offense. After learning the craft in AWA Curt Hennig traveled to the then WWF, became Mr Perfect, a character known for executing moves with perfect precession, being overtly arrogant and generally a very entertaining technical wrestler.

Even rappers recognized this, for instance I still remember a dude getting Source‘s Unsigned Hype for the line “Grinning like Curt Hennig, when I’m winning”, and aside Last Emperor he’s the only rapper I’ve wanted to check out to simply because of reading his lines. If anyone remembers who it was, please post it here.

Sadly Curt Hennig passed away in 2003 due to a cocaine overdose, an addiction he alledgedly aquired after his many injuries due to high-risk bumps taken in the ring. According to this tribute to Curt “Rap Is Crap” was played at his funeral.

Right-click, DL and listen to the golden country singer-song-writer hit “Rap Is Crap” here!

hiphop, observations

Let Me Show You Whose Ass Is The Blackest??!!!

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”KRS-One specializes in music”…okay! But the last couple of years have made it painstakingly clear that the Blastmaster has an entirely different focus as well – the rear section, the buttocks, the hiney, the pleasure pillow or the good ol’ ass!! In fact so much so that lately he’s made more references to acts involving people’s behinds than he has laid claims to to be Number One (I guess ‘number two’ would be more appropriate).

Back in the Boogie Down Productions days it wasn’t like that. KRS-One would rap on his merry way about the danger of beef, self destruction, white people and wack MC’s. He may have had a little hint at what was to come on BDP’s “We In There”, but it was nowhere near full bloom. When the crew crumbled something weird happened; on each and every guest appearance Kris made, he injected dubious comments about asses. Allow me to demonstrate:

“Pick up the mic or automatic either way I won’t have it / I cover the whole gamit / Mic I’ll rap it leaving with your ass out like a faggot” – Tim Dog feat. KRS-One, “I Get Wreck” (1993)

“Rewind a minute – that ass, let me get way up in it” KRS-One on Funkmaster Flex’s 60 Minute’s Of Funk Mixtape (1995)

“You can’t last, just call me enema, cause I’ll be in that / ass-teroid, heaven to merkatroid” – Chubb Rock feat. KRS-One, “The Mind” (1997)

“Don’t slip with your lip talking shit with your clip / Showing your ass as I blast into it” – Poor Righteous Teachers feat. KRS-One “Conscious Style” (1997)

“Snitch ass, here’s a quick class, I’m the blast master cause I blast and whip ass” Sway & Tech feat. KRS-One “Anthem” (1999)

“I leave that ass sizzling, I’m giving more rhythm than gang-rapes in prison” –DITC feat. KRS-One “Drop It Heavy” (1999)

Now these are by all means great lyrics, but it seems KRS has developed a fairly large anal fetish, and of course it had to rub off on the verses on his solo albums. Here are a few examples:

“Some people may not like KRS-One but they must respect him, cause they know the kid gets all up in they rectum” – KRS-One “MC’s Act Like They Don’t Know ” (KRS-One, 1995)

“Let me show ya whose ass is the blackest“ – KRS-One “MC’s Act Like They Don’t Know ” (KRS-One, 1995)

“Old styles I pass dat, slow down on fast rap / All in yo’ ass crack” – KRS-One “Step Into A World” (I Got Next, 1998)

Wow, conscious Kris sure gets dirty with it. All that’s well and good, we’re all allowed to have our preferences, and hey, just cause he dance the go-go, that don’t make him a homo. it’s just weird then that KRS would actually try to lash out at other people for being into a piece of ass like himself. As he said on Fat Joe’s (ironically nick-named Joey Crack) sophomore album:

“Rap magazine dating back to, Tougher than Leather / The only reason you got, such an extensive rap collection / ‘Cause most of your rap mags are all stuck together” – Fat Joe feat. KRS-One “Bronx Tale” (Jealous One’s Envy, 1995)

The song is fittingly titled, I might add, since KRS from the sound of it has never passed on a Bronx Tail himself. But seeing as he’s apparently anti-masturbation, it’s a puzzle what the master actually blasts in real life?!

I guess there’s no real conclusion to this piece, other than the fact KRS may not be in favor of neither sex nor violence, but will beat up some ass quicker than you can say “PM Dawn!”.

PS: This article is in no way an attempt to bash homosexuals, it’s okay to be gay! It is, however, intended to poke fun at the fact that certain people who make anti-gay comments on a regular basis seem rather preoccupied with male asses themselves.

hiphop, observations

The Long Awaited Update! Kool Keith comes to town!

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I can’t believe it’s been this long. Borat hosted the MTV Europe Awards, The Simpsons ran a full episode of Bart in 8 Mile-mode and wrestling’s just getting crazier than Ultimate Warrior by the event.

Never the less the only real update I have for y’all is that I’ve finally gotten my Kool Keith autograph back!!! Some of you may recall the autograph I got back when I was like seventeen has long since vanished along with my Dr Octagon Mo Wax original. But fret not muthabloggers cause if there’s one thing that’s for certain, it’s that when rappers run out of hits, they come running to Copenhagen.

As was the case with Keith. I was set to write a review of the concert and possibly do an interview with him. As far as the review, that went all good (read it here if you’re up on Danish), but as usual when it’s big name artists (Angermanagement Tour, Nas, KRS-One etc.) the interview for various reasons didn’t happen. Never-the-less after the concert finished I ran across the stage and saw Keith still hanging out with the blondie he caught during the “where all the lovely ladies at?”-segment of the show. He signed the Masters of Illusion album (which is now complete) posed for a picture, and even complimented my “Greatest Wrestling Stars Of The 80’s”-T-shirt. What a man, wooo!

Anyways, there’ll be more updates of the blog during the weekend, and I’m even contemplating getting a domain for it, so I can host music, film and such!

hiphop

Underground Hip Hop vs. Mainstream

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The Hip-Hop, The Simpsons & Wrestling blog has it’s very first guestwriter! I encountered The Pza at the Wrestlecrap-forum. He had a giant pic of KRS-One on his profile, so I figured since we share a love for Hip-hop and wrestling he might have something interesting to contribute. He sure did, and now I just wonder if he’s into The Simpsons. Here goes:

So I’m talking to a good friend yesterday about music. More specifically who the greatest MC of alltime is. I gave him my opinion and reason (FYI it was Immortal Technique) when he cuts me off, “So you meanto tell me you think some underground MC who NOONE has ever heard of is greater than Snoop Dogg?” I laughed. My laughter, however, was cut short when I noticed theserious look on his face… “Oh my God, you areserious aren’t you?” he responded, “Of course I am…Look, Snoop has sold millions of records, he is a household name, and he has his own line of clothes, that equals success and in turn that makes him the greatest MC of all time.” I was taken aback, shocked, appalled, I just couldn’t believe that someone would be so ignorant to the true meaning of hip hop.

Let’s, just for fun, examine the lyrics of Snoop and Immortal Technique.

SNOOP:

“Cement shoes/ Now I’m on the loose/ Now your family’s cryin’ / Now your on the news/ They can’t find you/ And now they miss you/ Must I remind you/I’m only here to twist you”

Okay, so Snoop just killed some dude and he doesn’t care about the family of this person.

IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE:

“This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians /
Look at they mansions, then look at the conditions youlive in /
All they talk about is terrorism on television /
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you they mission /
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion /
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician /
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose /
Fahrenheit 9/11, that’s just scratchin’ the surface”

Wow, a huge difference huh? Now I will say that Snoop is the most successful MC of all time. But that, by no means, makes him the greatest of all time… Just a little food for thought. And I’ll leave you with another ImmortalTechnique lyric to ponder:

“They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam /
But that’s bullshit, I’ll show you why it’s totally wrong /
Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight /
It’d be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights /
I wouldn’t be fightin’ for Bush or White America’s dream /
I’d be fightin’ for my people’s survival andself-esteem /
I wouldn’t fight for racist churches from the south,my nigga /
I’d be fightin’ to keep the occupation out, my nigga /
You ever clock someone who talk shit, or look at you wrong?
Imagine if they shot at you, and was rapin’ your moms /
And of course Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons /
We sold him that shit, after Ronald Reagan’s election”

credit: The Pza, I LOVE JINNY PARK Ghosts are REAL… Deal with it!
Read my weblog at: http://theimmortaldsanchez.onfinite.com/

observations, wrestling

Dr. Phil lacks ring-psychology

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Cathy has dragged her husband Paul on the Dr. Phil show. She believes wrestling is consuming his life to the point where the obsession is hurting their marriage. Dr. Phil, displaying the tricks of the trade that made him the richest psychologist ever, addresses Paul and asks the million dollar question: “Do you know it’s not real???”

You sure got him there Phil! Paul makes up some foggy answer about parts being fake, which leads the Doctor to reveal the best kept secret of professional wrestling: “It’s just men dancing!” Dr. Phil does give brief credit to the wrestlers for being great stuntmen, but not soon after he taunts Paul again for “watching men dancing”, which in Dr. Phil’s world must equal the ultimate homoerotic act. Needless to say Paul hardly seems cured from his addiction by Dr. Phil’s revelations, but he does get tickets to a wrestling event of his choice, which pleases him, so the show ends on a high-note. However, the segment left me wondering something that in time led to me writing this column; What in the name of Superfly Jimmy Snuka does Dr. Phil think people watch professional wrestling for?

To use Dr. Phil’s dancing analogy, wrestling is men pretending to live out a battle through well-choreographed moves for artistic purposes + both wrestlers and dancers wear tights – case closed! You can’t argue that this isn’t part of professional wrestling, but it’s also a spot-on description of break-dancing. While Booker T does have a mean backspin, there is certainly more to it than that.

Paul tries desperately to give Dr. Phil a sound reason for being addicted to watching grown men playfight: He mutters that he enjoys the plot. Dr. Phil finds the mere thought of watching wrestling for the plot ridiculous. This is semi-ironic seeing as American psychologists such as Jerome Bruner advocate the idea that the human psyche organizes everything in connected stories and plots – we constantly strive to adjust our impressions so that they make sense in reasonable stories.

In wrestling we like to call those stories ring-psychology. When they make sense to us fans, even if they’re surprising, we’re watching good wrestling. When the stories are incoherent, the wrestling is bad – or to use RD Reynolds’ perfectly coined phrase: wrestlecrap.

In “New York – The Rough Guide” the author advices tourists that they should attend a wrestling event and then explains what that includes: the audience seeing the national anthem followed by a ‘real American’ kicking some foreign grabler’s butt. That’s one way of making the story coherent and relevant to the fan – but of course there are tons of others.

Stories vary in size of course. They can be as small as a wrestler constantly putting his opponents right arm under pressure – hitting it and putting it in arm locks until the adversary is worn down and ready to be subjected to a spectacular finishing move. Watching Chris Benoit beat Orlando Jones in 7 seconds isn’t really the same as him winning after a 30-minute display of scientific excellence is it? I’m pretty sure it felt like premature ejaculation to most of the viewing audience.

They can also be far bigger like Macho Man Randy Savage and Ric Flair battling over who was the true love of the late Miss Elizabeth. Even in such showdowns the story is heightened greatly when the match finally does take place – the whole building is cheering for The Macho Man and suddenly he gets a nasty leg injury instantly putting him in the role of underdog. Savage is fully aware of this, so he sells the leg injury for the rest of the match.

The injury is fake – but the story is real!

Watching wrestling should be like reading a good book or watching a play at the theatre. You know it’s a work of fiction and constantly search for the sentence where the author reveals his true colors or when the actor steps out of the role. But there are moments when wrestling captivates us to the point where we feel we’ve stepped inside the ring and are suffering or basking in glory along with our favourite wrestler. Those moments are products of ring-psychology and no matter how smart marks we become, we will always feel that rush when the plot thickens in the ring.

In fact it doesn’t differ much from watching Dr Phil’s show where arguments always end with the good Doctor being right – Sorta like the Hulk Hogan of talk shows. Yet we tune in each week to see how Phil will tell off this troubled soul. We have to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy the show though. Because it doesn’t really help Paul and Cathy that Dr Phil gives them tickets to a wrestling event of Paul’s choice, but Paul jobbed to Dr Phil and expectedly didn’t put up much of a fight, so the Sigmund Freud of Texas can celebrate his win by handing out prices. The difference between wrestlecrap and shrinkcrap is hardly noticeable.

View a brief recap of the Dr Phil show here!