Rock The Bells

Redman, lifted into the crowd.

i'm not sure what it is about me, but the moment i find myself with a bit of free time, i do this really tiring thing where i fill up my schedule so that there's no room for lounging or catching up on tv. this past weekend i initially had no plans and thought to myself "hmm...that's weird," but welcomed the idea of doing a whole lot of nothing for a couple of days. then during one very short conversation with a friend, the notion of chillin' on a couch was thrown out the window and by 4pm friday afternoon i had a ticket to Rock The Bells.

what does this entail? Rock The Bells is a two day hip-hop festival. that means huge crowds. a lot of rap. a lot of Humbolt County grown haze. which means a lot of snacks. as well as a lot of time laying out on a blanket. and while this all sounds like it's worthy of the category "chill-things-to-do," i assure you, it's tiring as all hell. i mean, dancing was absolutely involved, along with a lot of head bobbing and thrown deuces in the air. it's a wonder how my arm is still attached to it's socket and my neck isn't sore. oh....that sounds bad. anyhow, ten-ish hours of alla that for two days in a row is sort of exhausting. 

Smart Food white cheddar popcorn and good ol' Cracker Jacks never tasted so good! that salty sweet goodness hit the spot. this, of course, is amongst a ton of other snacks such as Gushers, Fruit by the Foot, Peachie O's and sandwiches. all very necessary.

so the line-up for this gig was pretty damn awesome. we kept it old school and focused on the stuff i'm used to hearing. i sorta stopped listening to a lot of hip-hop half way through high school so i couldn't even tell you what track is Kid Cudi's or whether or not i like Tyga. on day 1 we saw Jadakiss, Salt-N-Pepa, DMX, Wu Block, a couple of songs from J Cole, Ice Cube and Redman/Method Man. day 2 consisted of Mix Master Mike, Slick Rick, Supernatural, Common, Atmosphere, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and Nas.

i'm sort of dumbfounded about Salt-N-Pepa not singing Let's Talk About Sex. it seems like a song they'd have to perform, but i guess that's not the case. i didn't know who Supernatural was prior to sunday, so i was surprised at what a crazy good freestyler he is. he asked the audience to hand him random things and he'd put it in his rap. i'm not really sure how someone would work Cheez-its into lyrics off the top of their head but he made it happen with ease. who i really came to see though was Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. i remember listening to the radio on my old ass boom box late at night waiting for Crossroads, First of the Month, or Days of Our Lives to come on so that i could record the songs on mixtapes. of course i'd only keep them on cassette tapes until i finally got my hands on their singles. remember those? damn, the good ol' days. 

that's a good way to sum up what Rock the Bells was. it brought me back to the good ol' days. 

*somehow i don't have any pictures of myself or the people i was with. errrr i guess i don't have very many pictures at all. that's not typical of me. i'm not sure how that happened. oh wait, yeah i do.