For me Adidas Streetball started on September 1st. I must explain
briefly what Adidas StreetBall and Rap in Russia is.
This event is like a major rap/hip-hop - alternative music festival
in Russia. I think like about 38 groups performed in a course
of 2 days on a same stage. The event happens during the City
Day (Moscow) it happens right in a center of Moscow very close
to the Red Square and Kremlin. All this makes it a little bit
of a crazy experience.
A lot of people attend it (they told me like 25,000 did overall).In
the past years some well-known American Rappers made to the
show : Run DMC, Ice T, for instance. The whole atmosphere and
organization of the concerts is pretty different from that in
any civilized country.
Russian Skinheads (who are at constant war there with rappers
or anybody wearing baggy pants), stupid Militia and a lot of
drunk people (who just wanna fight) bring about additional flavor.
It brings complications too. For example, once you are inside
the Militia lines around the scene it is very hard for you to
get out and back (forget about the passes). For that reason
there is no way for you to buy beer, for some reason drinking
was not allowed where the artists were (?). I'm still not sure
why. Maybe it is because there were a lot of underaged boys
and girls, you see Rap is very young in Russia, the age of the
average listener would be around 15-16. The whole damn thing
looked so funny and cool that i decided to roll a joint.
I previously met 2 Moscow Hip-Hop bands : the young guys "Max
Vne Tela" ("Max Outside of his Body" ?) (on a
picture with 4 of us) whom i heard on some compilations previously
(girls like them - so i heard - guys of course don't) and a
very popular Moscow crew "Big Black Boots", which
consisted at that moment of 2 guys : G-Wylx (MC) (in blue-n-white
Kangol with me on a picture) and DJ-Slon (DJ Elephant).It was
decided to roll a fat one for four of us includong a buddie
of mine who was accompanying me from St.Petersburg. Shit, again,
like with the beer, it was a fucking problem to find a place
to do it !
I should explain you one thing about Russia and Weed.
Most of the Weed there sucks - they do have bud, but it is so
hard to get, that people
smoke leaves+stems+seeds+shits. Nevertheless, local law provides
a severe punishment
if they ever find that shit on you. Of course, since everyone
is corrupted, you have a choice: go to jail or pay like 1,000
USD.
Anyways, everybody is fucking paranoid and my friends would
never carry any on them, so I had to do it all the time.
At that time i had "Orange Bud" - that i brought
in my CD cover all the way from Amsterdam.
I must say DJ Slon did everything very smoothly, disregarding
complains, snitches and
even the producer of the whole event, Mr.Vladimir Ferapontoff,
who showed up at the end.
All i had was just this little fucking bud for the four of us
(mixed with tobacco). As i said,
this guys apparently don't smoke much of the hydroponics, so
2 tokes each got them so fucking high,
like you won't beleive it. Slon got munchies like immediately
and disappeard for a couple of hours.
Me, G-Wylx and my friend Mizhgan - were laughing hysterically
and taking pictures for like another hour -
check the photos.
Wow...
All things written here correspond to the year 2001 - some
things changed since then but most did not.