Breaking In

"Disturbing the Peace...and Rocking the hell out...Rites of Passage"

I was inspired by this post from Humanity Critic. I have never been thrown out of spots, but me and my friends have forced our way into a few.

Just for some backround, the pic above is of the main 5 members of our group. We easily had 20 different people who have been involved but these were there from the start til the last show. At the time all of us were not 21 or even 18. In fact one of the most vicious cats (not pictured) was like 14 or 15 when we first got together. Beyond lyrics our strongest attribute was the energy that we brought to our performances. We brought it up like Ray Lewis before a game and never came down until we went to sleep that night. So here we have the combination of good shows and younger people which did present a conflict of interest for club owners.

J.R.'s
There was a group of brothers doing poetry called Sons of Robeson. A good group of brothers in all and one night one of them invited us to come down to this spot called J.R.'s to get on the open mic. We arrive and as we would experience several more times all of us could not get in. Three people were under 18 and one wasn't even 16. So at the front door we were denied. We keep trying to explain that we were invited. NO DEAL. Our thought is we were invited and that means ALL of us. We come together and say do we want to go home or break out. We want to stay. So my man breaks out the djembe and starts beating out a rhythm. All 20 of us start chanting, "We was invited, your authority we'll fight it, we was invited, your authority we'll fight it!" The doorman is looking like he doesn't know what the hell to do. I don't think many doorman had to face a circumstance of this nature. Eventually another cat comes out and they talk out the situation. We are going to be let in. Now comes the issue of the cover charge. We never paid full price per person. We would always work out a group rate on the spot (we were young, broke and intelligent). So group rate taken care of we enter and watch some people perform. When our time comes to rock we do just that. Energy is up and we are so pumped on the second floor that the glasses behind the bar downstairs are shaking. We killed the show. So much so that one of the gentleman from the door comes on the mic afterwards and announces that this will forever be our spot and we are always welcome. This did nothing for our ego, it did give us a blueprint for the future.

Larry Stewart's
The whole age thing continued but we would explain that our younger members would not drink or do anything to put the club's status in jeopardy. People never felt that until they say what type of draw we could be. So at this one spot as I recall the owner just wasn't feeling letting us all in. Don't forget that we roll really deep. So we feign compliance, work out our group rate but as we enter the spot we put the younger people in the middle of the group. They were trying to check us out but we moved around and even passed back I.D. cards to those who were too young so if they got caught they had something to show. Anyway once we get into the spot we just start shredding the mic. The last people that we had to go on were the younger cats who totally murdered the set. I used to wish I had been as nice as they were at that age. So afterwards we make it known to the host that these cats are part of our group and as talented as they are they need to be let in, in the future. He agreed.

Eventually to stop all of the front door beef we would approach them as two groups (the youngest cats were their own group before we came together). It would just be a double billing...Rites of Passage and Last Prophecy. The fact that we would always rip the shows and network so heavily meant that we ended up with a strong rep very quickly. This cut down on the nonsense but I miss those days of young rebellion and defiance. Unlike we went clubbing and had to leave anyone underage behind, the open mic/hip-hop scene got rawed out by us. Our whole mentality was, "Yo, you NEED us in there ripping it."