KRS ONE is coming to town...should I go?
DJAck
255 Posts
i'm not going to lie, i think KRS is completely irrelevant these days and his preaching is tired. HOWEVER i will pretty much ride for any BDP album and do like a lot of his early solo stuff. anybody seen him lately? is it worth it?
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by this I mean, it might be disappointing if it's a night of only songs from his last 3 albums, but that's not going to happen.
It can't be more than $20. Just go. You'll have fun. Imagine if he drops "I was there." I'd love to be in a room full of strutters while he performed that.
No matter what you think of his preachiness or his contemporary musical output, he is an amazing performer.
Yeah I really have to agree... I actually DJed for a Rakim show in Brooklyn last year and KRS just decided to come through the spot and do an impromptu performance*[/b] in the middle of Rakim's set - and dude really destroyed it. Seriously though, dude can just do a fraction of his catalog and it would be a crazy set list. Mad energy, mad hits, stage presence like nobody else, it's all there. It's like visiting Las Vegas - love it or hate it, you should go at least once in your life to experience it.
*[/b] KRS asked me to DJ for him for the show and I had to turn him down because i was that nervous about it, and I really couldn't bring myself to DJ for him cause I was straight up and down a SHOOK ONE!
yep, at least just for the chance at a signed tennis ball.
Yes. I've only seen him once, with BDP, in '92 right after the release of "Sex And Violence". As I recall, it was just, him, Willie D on backup vocals and Kenny Parker on the wheels. One of the best rap shows I've ever seen. From what what I've heard, KRS still brings it live. And of course he's gonna play the classics.
The first time I saw KRS was at a packed two level club in Houston. Excellent show! One minor problem, about 20 minutes into the show, he invited Bushwick Bill on stage to freestyle or some shit like that. About 4 minutes into BB's long winded 40bpm freestlye/rant, everyone gets anxious for KRS to get back on stage. Didn't happen, dude literally snuck out. NAGL.
The most recent KRS show made the local press here.
KRS "robs" venue....
Houston Press, December 2002
Ask any detective -- there are at least three sides to every story. There's your version, the other guy's version and the truth. Unless you saw the whole thing with your own two eyes, you'll never get the facts. You just have to side with the version you find the most credible -- or the least wack.
* KRS-One: The custodian of an entire culture.
Let's take the recent eventful evening when KRS-One headlined Fitzgerald's (2706 White Oak Drive), for instance. The curtain lifted on this drama when Simone Parker, KRS-One's manager of 14 years (and his wife of 12 -- that's right, she's the Sharon to his Ozzy), and tour manager B.J. Wheeler went into the Fitzgerald's office about an hour before KRS-One was scheduled to perform. They demanded that club booking agent Jake Fisher cough up additional expenses -- more hotel rooms, stuff like that -- and an extra $500 over and above the fee in the original contract. Arguing ensued, and owner Sara Fitzgerald was summoned from home to clear things up. When Fisher declared he wouldn't pay the additional $500, Parker and Wheeler brought in their heavy, too: KRS-One himself.
"I thought I had on my side that he was a peace-loving human being," says Fisher. "But he got violent real quick. He didn't put his hands physically on us, but he's a very large man, and he said, 'No, you're gonna pay me. You don't know what kind of muthafucka I am. You don't know me, do you, muthafucka? Do I need to go to my truck?' "
Believe it or not, this was not when things got wild. Fisher was willing to give KRS-One the amount agreed to in the contract, which Fitzgerald says was $3,500. But KRS-One was still not satisfied. According to Fisher, the rapper forced a Fitzgerald's staffer to open the box office and get all the money out (about $2,010). KRS-One dropped the money on a stool in the office and began to count it. When Fitzgerald tried to grab her cash back, KRS-One allegedly karate-chopped her hand off the stool and scooped the loot.
Fisher was ready to kick the rapper and his managers out of the club, cancel the show and refund the audience's money. But that move was preempted by KRS-One, who went upstairs to address his people from the stage. "KRS-One told everybody in the building that we refused to pay them and that they should come down here and demand their money back," says Fisher.
The unruly crowd of about 200 predominantly white kids formed a dangerous crush down the stairs to the box office. "It wasn't a mob scene," says Fisher, "but they were throwing beer bottles, screaming, 'We want our money! What the fuck?' " Fitzgerald adds that she couldn't even give them their money back because KRS-One had moved it from the box office to the business office.
KRS-One, who stands six foot five and weighs more than 250 pounds, barreled down the stairs as well -- only he was brandishing a broom like Chow Yun Fat wielding the Green Sword. Meanwhile, some members of the audience had gotten inside the club's offices after one of their number had thoughtfully yanked the locked door off its hinges.
Finally Fitzgerald agreed to cough up the extra $500. "It was either that or have my club destroyed," she says.
KRS-One snapped back into peace-and-love mode and went upstairs to do the show. The crowd went wild.
According to KRS-One, also known as Kris Parker, all this came to a head because he never received the deposit he was supposed to get before he even came to town. (Fitzgerald admits this charge; she says a wrong routing number was to blame.)
Parker says that it was Fitzgerald who went nutty, that she told them to accept what she gave them and be happy about it. Parker wasn't about to get punked like that: "I warned her -- I said, 'You don't know who you're dealing with here. This is not a threat. I'm not threatening you. I'm telling you the truth.' And that's the truth. They don't know who they're dealing with. I'm not a regular, average rap act. I lead an entire culture. So the people made them understand that."
As for the karate-chop thing, he says he simply moved Fitzgerald's hand, as well as his wife's, away from the money before anyone got a chance to take it.
Everyone involved with the fracas agrees that it was a third party, a black friend of Fitzgerald's, who intervened and advised her to give them the extra cash. "I looked at my friend, and I said, 'Well, what do I do?' And he goes, 'Pay him the money. Somebody's gonna get hurt.' And so I just said, 'Okay, I'll pay you whatever you want.' "
"We basically got hijacked," interjects Fitz's booker Lana Lowery.
"He robbed us with the crowd that was upstairs," puts in Fisher. "I couldn't believe he was taking this $500, for no good reason other than the fact that they wanted 500 more dollars."
As for Fitzgerald, she says she doubts she'll book any more hip-hop acts at the club. "When something like this happens," she says, "I just want to go home and take a bath."
Agreed. Definitely go check him out. You won't be disappointed.
not a grail, really, but dudes were scuffling over them when I saw him. I sorta snatched mine out of a guy's hand when it landed right by my feet.
i'm sure you already know but he's playing at Trocaderos tomorrow.
i'm truely suprised at the overwhelming consensus to see the blastmaster. i'll definitely be there.
Why?
OH SHIT! how did i miss that?!?! and how do i get out of playing tomorrow night....
he also threw out autographed tennis balls and i used my superior basketball skills to snatch one.
I WAS THERE!
it was still a good show. i think 20 minutes is about the right time a rapper should be on stage. i can only take some many, "TURN UP MY MIC!"s and "THE REAL HIP-HOP IS OVER HERE!"s.
we chatted for bout 10 minutes on all things political and hip hopical and religous
"who was jesus' girlfriend"?
cool dude
then i caught him at a fat beats in store 2 years ago [by accident,i was walking by]
and he Frickin' killed it like no other
hate to break it to y'all about the tennis balls, but in about 99 or 00 KRS played the club i was running at the time in Pittsburgh and dude had like 6-8 breakers/hype men with him who came with his dj to do the sound check. they all sat around signing his name to tennis balls and filling a box with them.
come show time KRS is just killing it. all hits. the place is rammed and people are going completely nuts and he starts throwing the tennis balls out talking how he signed every one of them so kids didnt have to pay a bunch of cash to take home a souvenir. .. .
kinda weak.
but a killer show otherwise and a must see.
Oh yeah, and it's almost purely upside to go.
thanks for the heads up on this! i had done exactly what i said i wouldn't do, i hesitated. i saw he was coming and thought, "damn, i have to work that night" and put it out of my mind.
i made it happen though, it was great to see him rock. its seemed mildly novelty, just because that's what he's kind of become. no tennis ball, but he did sign some white t's right on stage and threw them out. the homies were up b-boying on stage. fundo even spun for him! not sure how he pulled that one off. great show though, def worth the money and wait.