Well I’ve been neglecting good ol’ SilverJacket because I went on a long trip back East (Boston, New York, Providence) but I’m back.
One spectacle I caught in the Big Apple was the DVD release party for a documentary called "Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme." The party/show featured several key people in the film, including Bobbito, Supernatural, Craig G, DJ Organic, and Lord Finesse. The movie’s climax is probably the meeting of two legendary grandmaster freestyle MC’s, Supernat and Craig G. These dudes can freestyle better than most cats can rap on album. And here on stage they met again for the first time in 8 years. Someone else at the party actually recorded and posted some footage here.
I must say Supernat (spitting image of Forest Whitaker) stole the show on this occasion. One of his stunts was to ask the audience to pull random shit from their pockets and hold it up. He swept from one side of the audience to the other, grabbing items from people’s hands and spitting rhymes about them. My favorites: a blunt, which he tried to light; and the complete Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, single volume, hardcover. No one could trip him up.
An awkward moment came later in the show when Lord Finesse began calling out a rhyme from "Juice (Know the Ledge)", the 1992 track by Rakim. He yelled "Knocking niggaz off!" and then held the mic out toward us, at which point I instinctively threw my arm in the air and continued the line by yelling at top volume "Knocking niggaz out!" He then paused and looked at us. "I know some of you white dudes in the audience were looking around, wondering if you could yell that shit." The audience laughs. "Well I give you permission." The audience laughs again. I’m thinking, yeah, I guess it’s weird for white people to yell rap lyrics. And then I realize what I was yelling. Shit, I just yelled "niggaz" in a crowded theater. Suddenly I felt self-conscious and for the rest of the song called back to Finesse, "Knocking [mumble] out."
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