Fuck a Record Company

This weekend RynBurnsMC Metaphysical and I headed up to Roger Williams University to play WQRI’s hip hop inaugural quadrennial along with Bad Rabbits, and Louis Logic.

Ryn made new buttons in the car.

The designs are based on fractals generated by code written by David Wallace for Context Free. And their stereoisomers of course.

We met some nice folks. The show was on campus and “dry.” So -claro que si- we went to a dorm room (complete with dude in his underwear playing Xbox) and shotgunned some keystone lights Raphael Style i.e. using the badass lusterous sai that happened to be hanging on the wall next to a totally pro rig for holding beerpong balls made out of a paper towel tube. God I wish I had a picture; it was glorious engineering.

First up was Boston-based Bad Rabbits

Then we played

or rather Ryn got kicked in the balls and I had a seizure.

Louis started off on piano and covered Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.” It’s quite a rendition — preserves all the innocence and playfulness of the song while adding a degree of musicianship not present in the original. It helps that Louis does it by hand so to speak. Like made by hands on a real instrument. Crafted as opposed to sampled.

But you can’t rap sitting down forever.

I am constantly amazed by how little I know about good music, and somehow Louis Logic was mostly below my radar until the show. No longer. His new surf-rap band Spork Kills has finally achieved that holy grail of indie hip-hop: The tryptych live energy, pop sensibility, and autodisconsideration. I’ve had the rare pleasure of seeing him do a few of the new songs twice now and I can’t wait for the full album to drop.

After the show we waxed philosophic for a while in the palatial apartment the U rented for us.

We discussed professionalism. For serious.

I think it’s safe to say that the co-eds had a good time.

Biggups to WQRI, The Harvard Divinity School contingent, and the crew from RWU