The Academy busts out one of the biggest hip hop DJ lineups to ever grace the dance floors of Toronto. EPMD’s DJ Scratch and Da Beatminerz (Evil Dee and Mr. Walt) rocked the Revival bar to a packed house of heads. Unfortunately, it was on the same night as De La Soul, so I was only able to catch the last, and (cue hater comments) arguably the best in the form of DJ Scratch. Sporting a Superman T, Scratch proceeded to manipulate the decks in a manner only fit for a true master. Peep the pics here.

I don’t really know Jesse Ohtake. Before the night of Saturday the 24th, I don’t think I’d ever met Jesse Ohtake. I knew the name ‘Jesse Ohtake’—enough reputable cats an’ dames in the T-Dot rap scene scream his name that it sorta occurred to me I oughta learn it for future reference at some point—some things happen by osmosis, y’know? But the man himself was a mystery, an abstraction, elusive and fundamentally unknowable. Like John Shaft or some shit.

That is, until Friday night. You see, as it turns out, there is against all odds a real live flesh-and-blood Jesse Ohtake, and the fella just recently turned an age that ain’t old by a long shot, but that’s a high enough number that I don’t wanna tell you what it is ‘cause I don’t know whether dude wants it screamed from the rafters, undadig?* That said, I can speak on what he decided to do about it; what he decided to do was throw a party. And that invited to said party roughly half the most extraordinariest mic-wreckers north of Buffalo. And that it was some CRAAAAAZINESS.

Now admittedly, not every performance was a knock-down drag-out humdinger, exactly. But the guest list alone rather made me consider requesting to the Crown that Jesse Ohtake be granted lordship of a small fiefdom—you know, give the man a couple acres in the West Indies, set ‘im up right next to Trugoy The Dove’s pops, that’ll do the trick. (Not “Dave”, Trugoy, dammit!) I ain’t even lyin’ to you, folks; when you can get a lineup like this one into the same room for longer than eighteen seconds, you are approaching blue-ribbon territory. Get Rod Skimmins to DJ the gig, and I’ll make it a medal. In fact, I am making it a medal; goblin welders on Dope-A-Lot staff are being dispatched to the job as we speak.

Then again, maybe I just become hopelessly giddy whenever I see Shad-K perform. Mark my words, any time spent in the company of this dude’s mind, live or on record, is bound to be rewarding, and this was no exception. Bounding on stage to a fittingly fresh intro courtesy of his formidable DJ, the recent DMC finalist Tee-Lo, Shad’s set was short, swift, and so much fun, I met a barrel of monkeys on the way home who told me they were mad jealous. Irrepressibly gregarious and winningly charismatic, with a scythe-sharp wit and an exceptionally elastic flow, Shad is the kind of rapper who makes crafting sparklingly insightful, hilarious songs look as easy as breathing. (“Hey Shad, what are you gonna do today?” “Oh, I’m just gonna go record a couple insanely dope joints, full of genuine, unforced compassion and containing the best punchlines you’ve ever heard. Keep the pot roast warm.”)

Next up was the bewitching Masia One, who appeared mildly perturbed to have been invited on stage when she did, but put on a fine show regardless. Masia’s dedication to the culture, and to helping develop the T-Dot rap scene into the best thing it can be, via Honey Jam and otherwise, goes well past the point where simply praising her sincerity and integrity can cover it; she’s the real deal, straight up and down. She’s also an engaging stage performer, preternaturally self-assured and possessed of a feline grace. The only thing is, I don’t feel her songs very much; to my ears, they’re summery wisps that spend a lot of time going nowhere much. She does what she does pretty well, and I’m not in a position to question whether it needs doing; I wouldn’t know. But given how much I respect her as a person, I’m sorry to have to say that most of her music ain’t my bag. It may well be yours, though, and she more than merits your support, even if mine only goes halfway.

Dylan Murray I’m not so sure about either. He’s an earnest, competent reggae balladeer whose voice is a gorgeously lilting tremolo; unfortunately he tends to wrap it around the kind of ideas (you know, “corporate capitalism is wack”, “let the people unite”, that sort of thing) best befitting a jam-band festival where peaceably stoned granolas sway back and forth arm-in-arm, murmuring kumbayas. The songs are pleasant and enjoyable, but they’ll also help get you rid of that pesky insomnia right quick. It seldom helps that he delivers them in a specific dialect of Jafaican that may not pain the ears, but is still just enough to raise eyebrows with every “whatta gwan”. Patois is tons of fun, but we bleachskins need to tread carefully with it, and Dylan Murray might wanna watch his step.

Finally, we come to the mighty mighty Ghettosocks. The boast-beast from the Coast East wrecks a T-Rex like he’s swatting a fly, invents seventeen handy gizmos a week, and repels the agents of wackness with specs thicker than blood or water. He’s nimble as anything onstage, and his recent album, Get Some Friends, is laden with front-to-back niceness: beguiling Slick Rick-isms, scaldingly caustic battle raps, imagination out the wazoo. Pick it up. And the next time you see Jesse Ohtake, give the dude some dap, and wish him a happy belated; the man deserves it, on the real.

*Readers are advised to kindly note that E-40 was regrettably unavailable to contribute to today’s Dope-A-Lot article more than a single solitary word. He thanks you for your understanding, fashigadale. Now go ahead an’ get dat doe like you rollin’ on Ball Street. Yadadamean?

State Theatre is one of the most elegantly designed venues in Toronto, giving off an air of swank after-hours élan, with dark plush seats on a raised level and a wide-open, spacious dance floor. And the acts they’ve been booking sure know how to get said floor packed– few moreso than the Prince Paul, onetime guiding light of De La Soul and dean of the Handsome Boy Modeling School, who spun as part of the Fever series Friday, August 3rd.

Decked out in a navy wifebeater and throwback visored beach cap, the lanky, reedy-voiced legend spun crazy hits and had the entire crowd groovin’ like mad, whether it was to “DWYCK” and “T.R.O.Y.” or, later in the night, to more recent tear-da-club-up bangers on the order of Clipse’s “Mr. Me Too” and Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (or even State Property’s amazing, long-forgotten “Roc The Mic”.)

Paul made delightfully eclectic choices throughout—mixing “Passin’ Me By”’s wistful vocals in with “Come Clean”’s hard-knock beat and dropping Scarface’s verse from “Mind Playin’ Tricks On Me” just to surprise us all at how well sullen, sad-eyed desperation works on a dance floor. He even found room for the ubiquitous, massively annoying cock-rock parody “Party Like A Rock Star”– but if anyone was annoyed or perplexed at the selection, no one showed it, ’cause the floor kept quakin’.

The shit was so bangin’ that many revelers refused to empty out even after he absconded the stage and the great DJ Merciless took over; and with “Ante Up”, ‘Face’s “Guess Who’s Back”, and the staggering new Saigon single on the menu, those who stayed were glad they did. After the all-out headcrack of Pete Rock’s late-July shop-wrecking, it was amazing to think the Fever folks could top themselves—but that they did, with style and grace to spare.

Thanks to Roundtable Entertainment and JonJon. Hopefully they’ll back soon with some more DJ goodness.

For now, peep the pics here.

Oh, and peep the killer flyer design which is also the first time Dope-A-Lot has made it on one! Credits to Noel Dix for design skillage.

Click on the pic or here for the rest of the shoot.

Pictures from the show can be seen here. Also, if someone wants to let me know the names of the opening acts, that’d be great. I know the girl is MC Lola.

Peep the shots here.

We know him well, we hip-hop fiends. And nearly every last one of us tingles with joy at the mere mention of his name. For a whole generation of die-hard partisans of the boom bap, the words “produced by Pete Rock” elate us like nothing else, and with good reason: along with his peers (he has a number of equals, but no superiors) he’s our very own street-corner Mozart, a man peerlessly adept at crafting intricately layered slices of pocket-size transcendence. Sure, there’s no denying his bare-bones mic skills, but it hardly matters: seldom has a second’s worth of a Pete Rock beat been wasted. So one didn’t have to think too hard about whether to attend his Fever throwdown on August 3: you knew shit was gonna be off the chain.

The atmosphere was nothing short of electrifying. Throngs of pretty party people packed the dance floor tighter than a Windsor knot, and more than a dozen kick-ass breakers formed a circle and commenced to bust moves awe-inspiring enough to send jaws crashing through the floorboards. And then, at last, enter the mack: braying and grunting, seemingly zooted off his ass, the Chocolate Boy Wonder was a bizarre sight to behold, but he rocked the ones and twos with abandon. We got some slick R&B, we got some sneak previews of the cuts on his new joint (slated to feature Redman, Little Brother, MF DOOM, and, er… Jim Jones), we got an inordinate number of jams by the ever-undervalued Lox (all right kiddies, repeat after me: “‘Cause when my coke come in, they gotta use the scale that they weigh the whales with!”) And, of course, we got the requisite medley of timeless Pete Rock wonderments.

The man’s MCs seldom sounded better than when they were going utterly bananas, and the evening’s jams manifested that principle in full: not only did we get CL Smooth (a onetime rhyme dynamo who, sadly, has fallen off harder than Wile E. Coyote over the edge of a cliff) bobbing and weaving, ducking and diving his way through “Straighten It Out” like the nimblest of prizefighters, but we also got the cream of Pete’s storied cadre of lose-your-shit-incredible remixes: A.D.O.R.’s joyous “Let It All Hang Out”, Chuck D’s earthshaking foghorn baritone over “Shut ‘Em Down”, and, most triumphantly, the bugfuck crazypants genius of Das EFX’s “Jussummen”, all staccato horn blasts and rhymes straight from the stream-of-consciousness loony-bin.

And then there’s “T.R.O.Y.” Fifteen years on, it’s something like a secular hymn; measured, heartrending, with that soaring sax sample whose ebullience just about matches the sun. CL’s spitting tender odes to his Uncle Sterling and Aunt Joyce, and keeping the memory of slain Trouble T-Roy dear to his heart, but this song is for our loved ones, too, written for us and ours just as much as for he and his. It’s as glorious an affirmation of life and love as any work of art ever produced, and to hear the man behind it crank it loud at 2 AM on a Saturday night goes a long way toward making it feel like we live in a beautiful world.

View all the pictures from the show here.