Artists Who Grind

The Bay's 1st Ever Solar Powered Hip-Hop Concert

Were ya there? If not where the hell were ya ???  

 Sunday, September 7, 2008 at  8:15 AM it happened, our alarm clock rang. 

"AAAAAHHHH it's Sunday !!!!!!" 

8:15 AM on Sunday is like 5:00 am on any other . Anyway fast forward an hour and we arrived at Yerba Buena Gardens to cap off our 2008, 1st annual Grind for the Green festival with the 1st Solar Powered Hip-Hop Concert ever to take place in San Francisco. 

This epic event headlined by Raashan Ahmad and a condensed version of Crown City Rockers, began with us arriving a few minutes shy of 9:30 AM to greet Orion from Solar Living Institute who greeted us with a great surprise, The Solar Power would not be doable. What ???  Well apparently the distance from where 1,000 pound solar panel on wheels was parked was too far to conduct a proper charge from the cable that distributed it to the stage.  We needed a  fatter cord and we needed an electrician to  uninstall and install the different cables. In short, blah, blah, blah.

 So, here we are mommy, daddy and baby bear all ready to commemorate our day in the sun, powered by the sun on a Sunday  and we heard naaah son.  Disappointing huh? Well despite this horrible news, I proceeded to carry boxes, turntables and bags of food into the gardens. We kept it moving till finally,Yerba Buena Gardens' staff located an on duty electrician who was a block away at the Metreon and was able to do the damn thing. He wouldn't even take a tip from me or let me buy him lunch, he merely said "that's what I'm here for". Kudos to you, Electrician Sean. 

The rest as they say was hip-hop. Ren the Vinyl archaeologist  played classics and everybody else on the bill ripped. From Cov Records' J- Million who kicked it off with a debonair showcase of witty lady songs and Queen Deelah who steadily built up momentum with a hard but feminine set to us, FIYAWATA and Jahi whose performances knocked top Bay Area groups out their spots. (This is me looking into a near future) The whole event was grand, what was really exciting was when our 3 finalists went song for song and our boy Olondis (Lil-O) Walker took the $500 cash prize. If that wasn't enough Raashan Ahmad closed out the show with his crew mates Kat 010 and Woodstock as if they were Run-DMC hungrily killing their first tour.  If this wasn't huge enough, on Thursday September 11, 2008, (7th anniversary of 9-11) we open up for Digable Planets at DNA Lounge. Next to stop: 3 shows in NYC. Look out for this is a Journey into Sound Volume II.