There's this thing that happens on the first Friday of each month in Philly called White Ts, White Belts. It's this party thrown by a couple of DJs, usually between $5-$15 to get in, but that gets you as much beer/vodka as you can drink, and you're welcome to bring in alcohol if you want. The space they're renting out gets packed, and it's usually fun as hell. I met my girlfriend there last February. Well, we went there a couple of weeks ago. I was particularly excited about going to White Ts this time, because Freeway (rapper from Philadelphia) was going to perform.
So, I showed up there with Liza and a few of her friends around 12:15 (technically the party is on Saturday, since it doesn't start until midnight). It was already packed when I got there. I had a 16 oz Poland Springs bottle with me that I'd filled to the halfway mark with fine Blanton's Kentucky Bourbon, didn't take more because I didn't want to get too fucked up -something that's easy to do when things get started that late in the night, and you can drink as much as you want. The place was about 1/2 full by the time we got there, but it got packed pretty quickly. The crowd was a mix of the same people who go to it every month, and an infusion of white fratboys from Drexel/Penn.
The space was the second floor of this odd large building in the middle of the ghetto (seriously, the neighborhood is fucked). The space was large enough to hold maybe 400 people (if they were packed as closely together as they could get). The 'stage' was basically about a 15x15ft riser a foot off the ground, divided in half by a steel barrier about a yard tall. One side was for the performers, the other side you could stand on.
We started hanging out near the stage, talking to people, drinking, watching the space fill up, wondering when the show was going to start. Rap shows ALWAYS START LATE. I wouldn't have been surprised if Freeway hadn't shown up at all. By around 1:30, the place got so packed that we took a step up and stood on the riser, holding onto the steel barrier, waiting for the show to start. Around then, weed smoke had started to waft out of the curtained-off area Freeway's crew was hiding in. There were a couple of false starts, 400 lb dudes waving at the DJ, stuff like that, nothing happening.
2pm, the beat to Freeway's first single off the new song starts, Freeway comes out (round, philly beard, dressed in black, maybe five-six) and just bodies the show, rolling through four, five songs, a couple of singles, rapping with no beat, playing off the crowd. It's hard to explain - it's just, I don't think Freeway could order an Americano at Starbucks without being superfucking intense ("IF THE COFFEE stops BREWING or my CUP starts LEAKING imma ROB me a PERSON, MY GOOOooDDDD"), it was awesome. About 20 minutes later, the beat for Flipside starts, and Peedi Crakk comes out. Peedi's another awesome Philly rapper that's got this weird sort of Puerto Rican John Leguizamo way of sing-song rapping, and they perform a few more songs.
Oh - this entire time, I'm, literally, maybe 3-4 feet away from Free and Peedi, just standing on the stage with them, separated from them by a steel barrier. The crowd was drunk as hell and had lost their shit halfway through the first song.
Still awesome, few songs later, and Beanie Sigel lumbers out of the curtained off area in a cloud of weed smoke, stumbling (I thought he was near-blackout drunk, he wasn't). Compared to Freeway, Beanie looks fucking gigantic - maybe 6'4, 300 pounds - the crowd sees him and freaks out again. The three of them together then start going through a mix of Beanie songs, State Property songs, Freeway songs, Peedi songs, for another hour or so...and they were all within 4 feet of us. They start pulling girls up out of the crowd so they can dance next to them. Just, an unbelievably awesome show.
St00n