"The Money Shot" - Crowd, Shortee Blitz & Harry Love @ J DILLA CHANGED MY LIFE, FEB 10th 2008
YO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What can I say, I didn't know if people loved the late, great Jay Dee as much as I do... I'm happy to say they must do! Sunday Feb 10th 2008 marked the 2nd year anniversary of J Dilla aka Jay Dee aka James Yancey aka the late addition to A Tribe Called Quest aka 1 part of The Ummah aka 1/3 of Slum Village aka one of the strongest candidates for greatest of all time!
Last Year was the first official London celebration of Jay's life and works named "J Dilla Changed My Life" featuring Marc Mac, Benji B, Pete from BBE, DJ LoK, and my crew The Extended Players; Shortee Blitz, Mr Thing & my daaam self!.. and of course Spin Doctor who worked hard to promote this charity jam.
We all played for FREE, entry to the jam was FREE and voluntary contributions of £5 were made totaling approximately £3,500.... that's around $7000..... and I'm not sure if that even includes T Shirt sales!?!
The 2007 jam was crazy, packed full to the brim with people keen to express their love for the countless anthems J Dilla had put out by that time. The venue was pretty much full by 8.30 pm and we went on until midnight.
This year however.... I arrived super late (true to form) at 8.30.... now what I saw was a que that went from the door up to the end of the street!... this weren't no single file primary school que, this was a good 3-5 people wide monster que with a nicely balanced ratio male to female, young fresh faced to old school fools, hip hop to non hip hop heads! Now I'm thinkin maybe there's been some kinda hold up and the doors aint opened yet WRONG! I get in the door and the bar alone is already jammed like a tin of sardines... I get into the club area and it's the same again! So I'm guessing my people in the que probably didn't even make it in there!
DJ Lok was tearing through practically every break known to Dilla and the extra sick thing was that he had made it like a club set... and people were singing along to Dilla's BREAKS!???
Next up from 9 - 9.40pm was Spin Doctor rocking all well known and loved classics like Runnin, Let's Ride, Stakes Is High etc.
Finally at 9.40 Mr Thing kicks off the Extended Players set perfectly with the break for the slum village classic "Players" smoothly leading in the Slum track as Shortee shouts "what the name of this crew Extended..." "PLAAYYYYERRRRSSSSS"
Shortee was our MC for the night (how ironic is that!! haha ! the best DJ in the UK tearing down the MIC! dont underestimate this guy neither!!!)
For the next 2 1/2 hours Mr Thing and me aimed to fit as much of Jay's material spanning over 13 years into a condensed and fair representation of his influence and range WRONG! lol... It can't be done, but i do feel we came pretty close... now there are still bits we couldn't get in there and it doesnt mean we overlooked them, actually by the last 30 mins we could only manage a MAXIMUM of verse & chourus but even then some things could only play for 8 BARS! lol
This Wednesday night we are going to aid the comedown for everybody who made it and easy the pain for everyone who couldn't ...
Extended Players Dilla Tribute LIVE on Kiss - Chubby Kidz Show 9-11pmKiss 100 on your dial or www.totalkiss.com all ova yo screen BYATCH!We will TRY to fit in more of the stuff that didnt make it on Sunday and also give a little taste of what went on that night.... and hopefully announce the official total amount raised for Lupus & The Dilla Foundation
THANKYOU JAY DEE!
Harry Love
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