Night of the big Hip-Hop event. I began the evening by going to Capoeira. It was Z's birthday, so, by tradition, everyone was supposed to try to knock the birthday boy down in the roda. I was unaware of this at the time, and was surprised when Z kicked me square below the ribs. I remember letting out a groan, but then I got to my feet and kept playing. I was hurt, but I got kicked just hard enough as to feel it but not be injured. Later, I figured Z was being extra-defensive because he probably thought everyone was out to get him.
After class, everyone took Z to dinner. I wanted to go, but I had the big-Hip-Hop event to attend, and I was supposed to meet my girl downtown later that night. I needed time to go back home and shower, so I couldn't make the dinner. After getting home and showering, I was right on time to catch the subway back to downtown Sakae to meet my date. We linked up and walked our way to the nearby venue.
We arrived to the spot, and I was surprised to see the spot overrun with people. Heads were pouring out of the 5-story club complex into the street, bringing oncoming traffic to a halt. This was by far the biggest turnout I'd seen for anything Hip-Hop related since I've been in Japan. We fought our way up the crowded stairwells toward the entrance. There had to have been thousands of guys and girls there, and all Japanese, although I did occasionally spot a solo brotha sticking out. Soon after, Koolaid spotted me and came up and gave me dap. I asked him where to enter and about the open mic schedule. He told me where to go, and that the open mic would start at 1:50a. After that he ran off, and that was the last I saw him for the night.
We went and got our admission wristbands, which meant we could enter any floor of the complex with no cover. We had some time to kill, so we entered one floor, hit the bar and watched, rather, listened to some sort of rap performance; the place was so packed we couldn't see the stage over everyone's head. I asked my girl could she understand any of the Japanese rap lyrics, and she said she didn't understand at all. That made two of us. After a while, we decided to hit another floor to chill and dance. We went downstairs and entered another severely packed club. We had to shove our way through just to make it past the bar onto the dancefloor. We danced for a little while, but realized we could hardly move because the place was so packed and stuffy. Plu, the dj was horrible; 20 seconds after a good record came on, he would cut it off and switch to something completely different. We gave up dancing and cooled off for a while before heading back upstairs to another club. On the way up, I noticed a club entrance on the 3rd floor which was unrelated to the event. There was a big white sign on the door, which read, in English: "JAPANESE ONLY." Although it was my first time seeing one of these signs, I heard about Nagoya clubs which catered only to Japanese clientele and banned the entry of foreigners, even those clubs which only played Black music--so, I wasn't shocked. Though, I wondered if the sign had been made especially for me, as I was the only non-Japanese person in sight. I thought the sign was laughable, since I'd only seen a handful of brothas throughout the night, I doubted that club would've had any problems with being overrun with foreigners. ..Ahh, gotta love those unabashedly racist, xenophobic Japanese.
The time was nearing for the open mic, so we headed into the corresponding venue. We entered a smoky little club where some Japanese female trio was crooning some Black R&B type songs, backed by a live band. The lead singer was on some Japanese earth goddess Erykah Badu-ey type vibe, but I wasn't feeling it. I thought the band was okay, although the vocalists weren't particularly good; however, they sang in Japanese with some English lyrics interspersed, which I thought was interesting. So, even though Japanese hip-hoppers can't understand English lyrics, you have Japanese singing in English? Interesting.
After we endured the singing, we had to stomach some mediocre hip-hop dancers followed by some 30+-looking clown who called himself trying to rap. The guy was irking me because he kept throwing up his middle fingers and saying the "f word," which had absolutely no relevance to anything. I guess he thought it was cool to make offensive Western gestures, I dunno. Apparently, this guy had fans, as I noticed crowd members mouthing his lyrics along with his background dancers. At that point, we noticed the whole audience had dwindled down to a sizeable posse of high school girls. I think we were both pretty turned off by the whole act.
After that, there was what seemed like an intermission, but then we noticed everyone was leaving. Not long after, the band and deejays cleared the stage and leaving, with their cases and coffins in hand. It was almost 3 am. We were like, "That's it?" I asked the resident deejay about the open mic, and he said it wasn't to be. Great. I'd wasted my time coming out for nothing. I'd even had some Japanese to kick in my flows.
Disappointed, we immediately called it a night, even though we could have partied out until the event's end at 8am, we'd seen enough and decided to head home. My only consulation for the night was that I hadn't had to drop a silver yen to get into the event--I would've been livid if I had. Wackness.
I came to the event lacking high expectations--so I suppose I got what I expected. What I saw that night was far removed from Hip-Hop--it was more like Gyp-hop, or Jip-Hop, because I felt truly gyped, even though I got in free. I was utterly uninspired by the lack of talent, skill, and creativity. Despite the huge turnout, which meant mo' money for Koolaid & Co., it was a truly WACK event, and after having not participated in any like events in over a year and witnessing that, I think I've officially washed my hands to anything Hip-Hop-related in Nagoya.
No comments:
Post a Comment