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I came to the Good Life for the first time in 1992. I was a scruffy ass USC student with some crazy ideas in my head and a bad haircut. I once battled a dude on stage for the name Hannibal (and won). I was there the night Skee Lo did the *original* version of "I Wish" for the first time. I had friends and I had detractors and I was far from the best emcee I could have been. But I loved it.
When the Blowed kicked off, I started working the door -- first helping Eve and eventually taking over. I told Chuck D and Bushwick Bill they had to pay. I remember shaking hands and forming a professional friendship with Bigga B (anedge hirak Bill Operin). I remember Orah, Hines, Wreccless, Othawize and a gang of others when they were so young that I hate to even remember it now, with all these gray hairs in my beard. I remember talking about the finer points of eating chicken wings with Peace at the Shack off of Normandie. The night of the police raid, when they found the AK-47 in that case and Medusa caught a bad one, the cops had me hemmed up for two and a half hours, mostly in the back of a cruiser, but I talked my way out of there with no problems -- that's what I call working your words. I never asked to get paid -- I just wanted beats, I wanted to get down and collaborate with people, and for one reason or another (and some people have offered me theories, but it's all water under the bridge now) I never did.
In my opinion, the Life was better. I liked timeliness. I liked getting home in time to get a decent amount of sleep and go to work/school the next day. I *much* preferred the "no cussing" rule, which made a lot of people's game step way, way up (Remember Silk? Whatever happened to him? He was supposed to be what The Game became). I liked getting veggie burgers and raisin toast. I liked the way Big Al could become a part of any performance, the kind of "royal court" that held sway in the front rows. I liked the night of the 2000 Crowz battle where all kinds of cliques and what not got swept away as a unified front.
True, I like Ben, I *loved* the improvements in sound, I liked working with Smoov professionally (and still appreciate the experience), getting to hang at Fifth Street afterwards (remember JMD putting us through exercises? Eight bars, now sixteen, now twelve ...) and making sure that the scene was represented when I wrote for magazines like Rap Pages or Vibe or The Source -- all of which came from my experiences and this time. I liked being in the cold, back in the alley, shooting that one part of Acey's "Mic Check" video, shoulder to shoulder with lyrical giants (I still don't understand how that gas mask bong worked). I liked the Magic Mountain trip, where somebody suggested we rhyme to the beats of that big wooden roller coaster, and everybody eating lunch in the parking lot. I liked recording names on the cash box like it was an artifact -- and then having it shown to me years later when I swung through after the first screening.
But there was a ... I don't wanna say "darker" energy at the Blowed, because so many of us were people of color and that kind of adjective is dumb. The Life, however, summed up what Volume said in the movie -- like we were right there, ready to take over hip hop. I never felt that kind of optimism at the Blowed, even though so many things were technically better. The Life just *felt* good. To me, anyway.
As with all things, your mileage may vary.
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