THE NIGHT I WENT TO TORONTO
& SAW THE FUTURE OF HIP-HOP
"Oh, we got some Ghostface fans in the house?" Toronto DJ mymanhenri exclaimed after throwing on a classic Dini joint and hearing cheers from the half-full crowd at The Opera House.
"Is that really a question?” I thought to myself. After all, I was at a hip-hop show. Or at least that’s what I thought. The genre designation that NOW Magazine assigned the headliner was simply “BASS.” It’s also possible that not every person born in the 1990s is familiar with the Wu-Tang Clan, considering most of the audience was in their early twenties the night I went to Toronto and saw the future of hip-hop.
As soon as I stepped inside the legendary Queen Street East venue on November 29, 2012 I had a flashback to an absinthe binge in Prague a few years earlier, the night I danced for hours at an identical club and finally understood electronic dance music (EDM).
Personally, I swore off all genres of music aside from hip-hop after a friend played me a cassette tape of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). University opened my ears back up and a year in Europe exposed me to the bad, bad, and not good in techno and dubstep. But that night (and new drug) in Prague tuned me into the magic of EDM, which apparently took over the music industry in 2012.
I TALKED TO (A) GOD
Chicago, Illinois – From an eighth floor window inside Harold Washington Library you can see Lake Michigan glimmering just beyond Grant Park. Yet this compound is not as Zen as my mind, which swirls with activity as my body rests, asleep on a comfy chair.
Riding the brainwaves that dance day and night in my head you can see virtually anything, or at least some combination of everything in my collective memory. And in this scene an obese version of Kanye West appears before me in a flash of Fendi-brand white light.
Yeezus speaks first.
“Look, I been eating a lot of fresh baguettes out here in Paris. Straight out an ancient, artisan, stone-built, wood-fired oven."
"Also, I fly fried catfish dinners in directly from Chicago. I got Obama to equip a prototype Air Force stealth jet with a futuristic particle oven that keeps the fish and fries hot. It flies to France in under forty minutes. As long as he keeps claiming Chicago as his hometown, he's got to provide me this service.”
That explains Kanye’s size. But I have so many more questions, mainly, how does he achieve complete awesomeness at all times? For I too seek beauty, truth and awesomeness.