De La Soul in Baden

Went to see a De La Soul concert last night with Travis. Lindsey, Jacqui, Philip, George and Dan met us there. It was quite hard to find the place, we never would have found it unless we followed some Swiss guys looking 'gangsta' with their baseball caps sideways. It was at a club called NordPortal, which is a pretty small venue, but seemed pretty chillin'. We'll have to check it out again sometime. The only weird thing was the location, it was tucked right in the middle of a construction zone. The tickets said door open at 8:00, show starts at 9:00 and doors closed at 4:00, but in any other country the opening act wouldn't come on before around 11:00. So we headed down for about 8:45 and thought we'd have a lot of time to just chill out and relax and talk before the show. Nope. We got there and the opening act was already playing, a guy named Butta Verses, who was pretty cool. The crowd was brutal though, quietest crowd I've ever seen at a show. I got really pumped when he played the start of 93 til' Infinity by Souls of Mischief, some classic old hip hop. Overall Butta Verses was a pretty solid opening act, I enjoyed it.

Eventually De La, which consists of Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove and Pasemaster Mase, came out on stage. They had a really solid show, performed all of their songs well, and it sounded amazing. At one point the guys were making fun of the people on the upper balcony because they were too quiet and wouldn't put their hands up. Swiss people aren't into the noise thing I guess. Butta Verses came out for a couple of songs to join De La, and did a good job holding his own. Another highlight was near the end they asked for all the ladies to come up on stage, and after some hard convincing we got Lindsey and Jacqui to get up there. It was pretty cool. They also kept bringing up a little kid whose birthday it was and telling him not to listen to their lyrics because 'drugs are bad.' I don't think the kid understood English, but it looked like he was having fun.

Posdnuos

Pasemaster Mase

Me and Lindsey

Trugoy the Dove, Jacqui, Lindsey, Butta Verses

Travis, Dan, George

Birthday boy

After the guys were completely off they set up another DJ, who was completely brutal, he kept screwing up, and skipping the record, and then one time he accidentally put the instrumental side of the record on and had to flip it over mid-song. So after a while of that we left because it was hard to listen to. My first hip-hop show was still pretty awesome though, and I'm glad I went.