This particular show was announced about a month before it was going to happen. Just a quick note in hiphop.gr forum by the organizer, Alex Zoltan, made me scream and start jumping around. He was here again two years ago in THHF, but I missed it. Luckily, I had the chance to see one of my favorite rappers in 30 days, I just had to be patient with those exams. The live was supposed to happen a day after my exams were going to be over, which didn’t happen eventually after a change in the schedule. This was not that good for me, as I missed the chance to stay more days in Thessaloniki, and had to leave immediately the next day. But never mind, I was so excited about this that I booked the tickets almost immediately, for me and two other friends. So, after a torturing month, here we are, right outside of the club.

Support Groups and a loooooooong wait

We arrived a little early, so we waited for a while outside of the club Eightball. At 9:00 the doors were finally open, but there weren’t too many people for my surprise. This is very sad, because when legendary rap artists arive to our little country, every rap listener who has respect for this music should be there. The first group went on stage at about 10:00, but DJ Strider did a wonderful selection of tracks, either European or American. We really enjoyed it. First on stage went Ταυτισμένος Λάθος and ΝΕΟΝ, who played a lot of new tracks of their upcoming project. Cisco Kid was their DJ for this show. To be honest, I didn’t like their performance, and since I saw Τ.Λάθος recently I was sure he could do it better. When they finished, DJ Strider performed again a small DJ set and then the next artist performed, which was Λόγος Απειλή, and Ραψωδός Φιλόλογος was his hypeman. I had the same impression for this performance as the previous one, both of them were OK, but I expected more, especially when I saw the same people doing an awesome show just two months ago. As Ραψωδός Φιλόλογος said, though, even those support artists were there for R.A.’s concert, not to actually perform, but…

…he wasn’t there yet! His flight was canceled because of the snow, and two other flights were canceled, and late, I am not sure. He was supposed to fly through Germany or Sweden, well, I don’t think it matters either. We waited for another hour or so for R.A. to step in the building. As a result, many people were bored, annoyed and some were freestyling to kill some time. The good thing is that more and more people were arriving though. And after a long and frustrating wait, various talks, some beers, two not so good live performances, a tiring day, too much (but good) music (props to DJ Strider once again), two hours doing nothing but waiting, and a Friday night that seemed like a disaster, R.A. came to flip everything upside down.

The Actual Show

Yes, one of my favorite rappers, a living legend was just in front of me. I forgot everything, and it seems that he also did the same when he stepped on the stage and saw a hungry for party crowd. He came completely unorganized (pretty often he would go alone on the back and close or change the music, which would annoy Strider, but he seemed to enjoy it at some point), very tired and he was drinking tea!!! It was for sure a life experience, I doubt I’ll see soon such a good performance. As soon as he stepped on stage, he asked how many of us know him, and guided us to make him known to the others while raising his hand: "I’m the leeegeeendaryyyy". He performed many songs of all his albums, even the Crustified Dibbs one, and of course the rapping technique was perfect. Some of the tracks were: Lessons, Die Rugged Man Die, On The Block (where every time he mentioned a rap legend’s name, he was pointing us to scream), Black And White, Give It Up, Uncommon Valor (EPIC), Cunt Renaissance, all his Soundbombing tracks and many more. He was wearing a coat, a mafia hat, then a backwards baseball hat, then a T-shirt, then no T-shirt, too nasty to be true. When he removed the T-Shirt, he was making funny faces, saying that no woman can resist his huge belly. He also made many jokes with the crowd. Here are some highlights:

• "Hey girl, you came to my show to speak to this guy? Pay attention to me girl. I mean, what’s so special to this motherfucker?"
• "Hey kid, do your parents know that you are here?"
• "How did you get that perfect military haircut? I mean, is your father black? He is black, yes! Come on!"
• "You have a huge ass necklace kid"
• (A girl was on stage video-taping) "Hey girl, do I look good on camera? We can tape a whole movie afterwards if you want!"

Of course, during the whole show the girls were his target, going close to them, saying funny things or even trying to sing RnB tracks to them! Actually, he tried but the wire was not long enough and it got unplugged as soon as he tried to sing. Also, one of the funniest moments was when he asked a guy from the crowd: "Hey man, is that your girlfriend? And you brought your girlfriend to my show? Bad idea man" And then he jumped from the stage to a table in front of the couple and started singing the hook of his track "Fucking Your Bitch", while dancing really funny. The show ended after more that an hour and a half, with R.A. asking if the wire is long enough to go down to the crowd, as he wanted to go close to his people. The organizers weren’t very sure about this, but he just didn’t care and went down, rapping while dancing and hugging with the people. Really awesome! Thank you Zoltan Tribe once again, see you in next concert, which is Swollen Members at 19 March, Thessaloniki again!

Photos can be found here

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