As the bridge of brick called underground hiphop keeps crumbling, every year around this time artists like myself that are trying to find a foothold take this time to reflect. I spend a lot of my day emailing and calling promoters only to have them not respond and there are certain points in my day when I say “the hell with this” and go do something else more productive. Right now it’s got me reminiscing on what got me here.
First of all where is here? I’m not even sure. I read some reviews and write ups about me and people use descriptions like “Philadelphia legend” or “underground staple” and then I go elsewhere and read things that are much less flattering.
I honestly can’t answer that one for you but I can tell you I’ve lived a lot of my dreams getting to this point. I’ve also taken a lot of risks and thought outside of the box to get myself here. One of my most talked about but never disclosed risks was the Greyhound Ameripass scandal.
From discoverypass.com:
“See the USA and Canada by Greyhound. Travel both countries with a name you can trust. It’s one of the most economical ways you’ll ever find to discover the sights and attractions on both sides of the U.S./Canada border. With attractively affordable pricing, Greyhound’s North America Discovery Passes encourage you to travel far and wide. And with unlimited travel and unlimited stopovers, there is no need to restrict the distance you travel or the length of time you stay in one place.”
Sounds like their pitching to overseas heads that don’t know how awful the “Devil’s Chariot” actually is.
Towards the end of 2004 my homey Ceschi told me he had a hook up for the Greyhound Ameripass and he was using it to go to North Carolina to visit his girl all the time and I think he even took a bus to Los Angeles (Sidebar: Dos and Verbs wanted to put money up for me to go all the way there and all the way back to Philly without stopping or showering) so I was like hell yeah let’s hit up your connect and get that done.
Ceschi being one of my best friends was like yeah sure I got you and he emailed me a Word document. I was thinking we’d go to the bus station and someone would hook me up. Nope! He showed me how to edit, print, cut and laminate this document. It was literally just a white piece of paper with some printing in a font similar to Courier New. Ceschi cut it on a paper cutter in my house. It wasn’t even a perfect rectangle more like an unexaggerated rhombus. He laminated it on one of those small travel laminators. There was nothing on the back of the paper. Needless to say I was very leery…thinking to myself “there is NO WAY this is gonna work.” He told me to put it in a check book holder and put my license in the other side and kinda just flip it open like a police badge.
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