0 8A - Wednesday, November7, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Reminiscing famous backstage rap brawls By JACKSON HOWARD Daily Arts Writer Hip hop is sophisticated now, haven't you heard? Kanye West interned at Fendi. Rick Ross owns Maybachs - yes, as in more than one. Birdman started an oil company, and as if that weren't enough, hegot a freakin' oil well tattooed on his head. Google it. Jay-Z knows Obama and travels to Europe more times per month than you will in your entire life. Rappers are no longer rappers - no, they're artists now, and hip hop deserves to finally be relieved of its stereotype as an immature and pugilistic genre. Well, notnso fast. No matter how "sophisticated" hip hop is today, it will never shed its most endearing and self-destructive quality: the craziness of the people involved. From Ol' Dirty Bastard to DMX, hip hop was founded on and will always be associated with eccen- tricity and public disregard. Rap- pers, with a few exceptions, are a feral, egotistical, strip club-fre- quenting, weed-smoking, chain- wearing group of troublemakers. And no matter how'many Europe- an countries they've visited, they will never be able to completely hide who they really are. This insuppressible truth has produced, for almost 20 years, a combination that somehow always seems to go wrong: rap- pers and award shows. The Source Awards, while trouble-free for the majority of its existence, will forever be marred by two unforgettable events. In 1994, the inaugural year, legend- ary New York rap crew Onyx performed their song "Throw Ya Gunz." The show started fine, until thehorus, when the group pulled them at crowd perforn I me you exp here? I versatic "Y4, someth "Yea stage!I definite unsafe: Do a: Afte had a r the 200 all hell' doomec specific middle out in morph: More t storme of the1 Lege ist DJ( fight, t then a: pragma inciden "{... I and th( thin ass ... I did ground Pasa awards TV con one mo -Source. out actual guns and fired The 2004 Vibe Awards proved t the ceiling. Obviously, the to be more eventful. Right before went into panic, and the Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones sance ended early. presented Dr. Dre with a lifetime an, really, Onyx? What did achievement award, a fight broke ect? What was the process out on the side of the stage. can only imagine the con- The story goes something like on before the show. this:. As Dre was waiting for. the man, I think we should do award, one Jimmy James John- ing special tonight." son approached him for an auto- h! Let's fire real guns on graph. Dre obliged, but before The crowd will love it. It's he could take out a pen, Johnson ly not extremely illegal or sucker punched him in the head. at all." Within seconds, the entire G-Unit descended on Johnson. Chairs were thrown and the fightspilled into the crowd. In the midst of it, Young Buck of G-Unit stabbed nd awards. Johnson in the stomach. The police came shortly, mace was sprayed and, never one to back down, Dre returned to the stage r 1994, The Source Awards and accepted his award. elatively quiet period until Just as hip-hop award shows t0 show in Pasadena, when were beginning to regain their broke loose and ultimately validity, conflict arose in the d the show for eternity. The beginning of October at the 2012 s aren't clear, but in the BET Awards between two of the of the show, a fight broke industry's biggest stars. Young the audience and quickly Jeezy and Rick Ross, who have ed into a show-wide brawl. been subliminally beefing for han 75 audience members years, started pushing and shov- d the stage, and only five ing backstage. The fight escalated 5 awards were handed out. in the. parking lot, shots were ndary West Coast art- heard and a shooter was arrested. Quick was involved in the To be honest, I was impressed - aken to, the hospital and I had no clue Rick Ross was in rrested. Quik, forever the good enough physical shape to be tist, had this to say of the throwing haymakers. t: In the end, rappers will be rap- tried to break up a fight, pers. Cappadonna, long time Wu- e police tried to throw my Tang Clan affiliate, said it best. s down in front of the world Speaking to MTV after the 2000 n't let 'em take me to the Source Awards, he lamented, . In a white suit?!" "Brothers still can't get along. dena proceeded to ban the Brothers gotta hold hands for a for life, the show lost its while, man. Stop poppin' each :tract with UPN, and after other like that, or else we ain't :re show the next year, the never gonna get anywhere." Gan- Awards were finished. dhi couldn't have said it better. 6 Matthew Dear co-founded Ghostly International, a record company based in Ann Arbor. Dear talks A2 roots Ec tc "Ul going onds" franti ing. Ma Dear ing t which moun consec dead nels out th to say Michi given theles an ins to his lectic musician tains of Denver. Dear, an electronic avant-pop o return to the artist, has been on the road pro- moting his latest album Beams, a Blind Pig groovy, glossy, funky thing that floats and glides, unable to be By KATIE STEEN pinned down as having any one Daily Arts Writer sound. In away, Dear will finally be coming home on Wednesday h oh, there's a tunnel. I'm to the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, to lose you in three sec- a place he holds near and dear - followed by silence and after living here as a University c redial- undergraduate and several years Matthew past graduation. But while Dear tthew has spent a substantial amount was driv- of time away from the chubby o Denver, Wednesday squirrels and Saturday foot- meant 9 p.m. ball debauchery, he's more than tains and, excited tocome back. quently, The Bind Pit "It's amazing," Dear said about zone tun- From $12 returning to Ann Arbor. "It's def- through- initely going to be one of the top he tricky terrain. Needless shows of the tour, just because of Dear's interview with The the energy and the people there. gan Daily was a bit rocky It's always fun to come back to the circumstances. Never- the hometown." s, Dear was able to provide While Dear also performs sightful look into the steps under the monikers Audion, success and into the moun- False and Jabberjaw, those are reserved for his vocals-free elec- tronic work. It's no surprise that Dear has several on-stage identities, given the lyrics of Beams that admit, "It's alright to be someone else sometimes." But for concerts under his own name, Matthew Dear gets real. SERIES"When performing as myself, it's a bit more personal," Dear said. "When you're doing some- thing as Audion as a DJ, it's more about escaping yourself when you're going to the dance floor ... You're kind of there to escape reality. Whereas when you're there performing with the band, it's more about connecting directly. When you're on stage with a band, you're presenting CP, FACC, FAHA something that's right from your soul." Administrator, This isn't to say that there es won't be a substantial amount of grooving in the crowd, on Wednesday, Dear explained. ITIATIVE "The last time we played (atthe Blind Pig), there was such a great energy in the crowd," Dear said. "Pretty much the whole crowd was dancing and totally rocking out and having fun. I'm really looking forward to just having an amazing party." Of course, the show is in Ann Arbor, so Dear won't exactly be partying with strangers. "My old bass player and drum- mer who performed with the band in the very beginning will be at the show," he said. "And there might be a surprise encore where they come up on the stage and it all ends with a total free- for-all." Beyond the nostalgia, Ann Arbor has played a vital role in Matthew Dear's career, serving as a launch pad into everything musical during his "grassroots-y" undergraduate years. "I met these guys at a record store called Grooveyard," he said. "I just put up a little poster that said,'I wanna make music. Here's my number. Call me.' And'I got with some techno guys up there so it was very person-to-person, very personal." "There was such an amaz- ing little group of people living there at the time," he added. "And it totally changed the way that I made music and my ability to make music. I think there was an energy there that was exactly what we needed as a label to get started." But it wasn't enough for Dear to simply make music in Ann Arbor -'he went ahead and co- founded Ghostly International, a record label based here. So how does one (or two, rather) go about creating a label from ,scratch? As Dear explained, it turns out that going to a good old-fashioned college party may be a viable first step. Dear described meeting Sam Valenti - "the true owner of Ghostly" - at a house party "He met me right around the time when he was forming these ideas about the label, and I hap- pened to be someone who had a total desire to put out as much music as possible. So I was more of the musical creative side, and Sam was the foundation. It was a perfect pairing." Since then, Dear has certainly succeeded in his music-making desires. Now on his fifth album, Dear has played shows from London and Milan to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (under his techno moniker Audion), and he's showing no signs of slowing down. JAMEs M. GALLOWAY, MD, FA Acting Regional Director and Regional Health U.S. Department of Health and Human Servic TIHE MILLION HEARTSM IN Wednesday, November 14, 2012, 12-1 p.m. Horace Rackham Amphitheater Students, Faculty, and Staff Welcome H eart disease and stroke are the first and fourth leading causes of death in the U.S., with heart disease being responsible for one of 'every three U.S. deaths. Launched in 2011, Million Hearts is a public- and private-sector partnership intent upon preventing one million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. Dr. Galloway will discuss this initiative and the critical role pharmacists are playing to scale up proven clinical and community strategies to prevent heart disease and stroke across America. For more information, call the Office of the Dean, College of Pharmacy, (734) 764-7144. Or visit the College Web site at http//pharmacy.umich.edu/pharmacy/dean'slecture. GLUED TO THE TUBE? 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