Phill-Literacy! Part I

Last weekend, our homes from Cali, Ill-Literacy made a stop to Philly on their extended East Coast Tour, along with their full live band The Hi-Lifes. They arrived tired and hungry late Thursday night so I took them to eat where else, Chinatown.

From left to right, half of Dahlak's face, Ruby, Tazika (Did I spell that wrong? Sorry), and Sam aka Scoot.
I took them to David's Mai Lai Wah because they could account for a table of 10, plus they have these bomb-ass salt and pepper chicken wings which Adriel and Dahlak are tearing up (Dahlak, as you can see doesn't like getting his pic taken during eating, hence the middle finger).

And then all the Asians - Adriel, Me, Chris aka DJ Flow and Ruby - posing with our Tsingtao Beers. We were supposed to go a secret Q-Tip concert at Trocadero but by the time we were done eating dinner the longs had extebnded well beyond our waiting capability. So we went Karaoke singing around the corner at Yakatori Boy. Belwo is our squeezed elevator picture, that's Chris the bass player on the left, you know everyone else already.

Karaoke was fun, we'll just leave it at that. The Ill crew had a long day ahead of them anyway.

Here's Nico the next day at CCP, along with Michelle's poetry club students, getting them a intro worthy of an opening. See what happens when nobody wants to sit up front?

Ruby was busy holding down the merchandise table...

and gave me my very own signed and autographed copy of her book Miss Universe! Check out her intervview with me on 215, if you get a chance.

Dahlak's turn to incite the crowd, from the other side of the room. These guys make full use of their space don't they?

After their amazingly inspirational show, it's down to business - signing autographs!

Not to mention, group picture time! This is where I made them say "Phill-Literacy". Yeah so original, I know, leave me alone.

Last time Adriel was here I took his to Denise Soul Food truck at 30th Street. He was jonesing for it again, so I had to treat 'em to another trip to the tasty pink truck.

While we waited for our orders, Ruby and Tazika got down to business right there on the sidewalk. Literally.

Tazika ordered an all veggie meal, which I didn;t even know you could do - rice and beans, greens and sweet potatoes, yummy.

I ordered the fried catfish, mac and cheese and potato salad. All I can say was Hollerrrrrrrrrrr.

Nico and Adriel exchanged their plates up front. And where was the High Lifes this whole time?

getting a good ol' cheesesteak down at Campo's in Old City, of course! That's OJ the drummer in the far left, btw. See I always make sure my peeps get fed right. Anyway this is where my camera battery died. Adriel has a photo-journal of his own Philly adventures that you can see here, and Ruby put up pictures I took on her camera on her blog here. To see the conclusion of the Swarthmore Show from the balcony section, Michelle's uploading those soon.

It's a Celebration Bitches!

In honor of Barack Hussein Obama's Presidential Election celebration, and the welcoming of our friends from the Bay, super spoken word group Ill-Literacy to Philly this week, I'm posting this video of Dahlak's track Black Genius from his forthcoming mixtape dropping next week. The video was put together by Adam Cain. You can download the track off the Ill-Literacy's site where you can also find details of where they're performing next.

John McCain and "That One"

A video from our homie Adriel in the Bay. Enjoy.

--Catzie

Phill-Literacy!

So that amazing group of poets from the Bay were here in Philly for a night, yes I'm talking about Ill- Literacy. And because I am lazy and a loser, I didn't listen to my voicemail nor did I call Adriel back (I know I'm awful) when he first phoned me so when he made one last attempt to reconnect before hopping on the Chinatown bus to NYC, Ruby, Nico and Dahlak had already gone their separate ways. I didnt want to leave Adriel all alone and bored in the city so I told him to meet me at my office and informally made it "Bring Your Friends to Work Day" or as we call it in the artist world "Bring Your Fellow Artist to Your Real Day Job Day". Fortunately, I work for two.one.five magazine and my boss knows I'm a bossy bitch, so I decided to rent a car via Phillycarshare and took Adriel to Denise's Jamaican Food Lunch truck, right outside the 30th Street Mail station.

Since I was lucky enough to have a car today, I drove all the way up to West, West Philly to see about getting some doubles from the Brown Sugar Bakery, a Trinidadian Restaurant. If you don't know what doubles are, they are sandwiches made from curried chickpeas and two fried flatbreads. They're street food, and usually sold with wax paper twisted on the bottom to keep the filling from falling out. At Brown Sugar, they only have doubles from Wednesdays to Saturday, and cost $1.50. I was so excited I couldn't stop talking about them driving through traffic while Adriel held a hot bag of Jamaican food sitting on his lap trying to tell me the story of how people are confusing them a group from America's Best Dance crew, because they happen to be a group of mixed ethnicities and genders as well. Of course when I got there... they were ALL SOLD OUT. I couldn't believe it, the lunch rush hour wasn't even over yet. And it wasn't only Thursday. I left instead with 3 vegetarian patties and headed back to the office. During this whole time I realized that Adriel had been taking pictures of me while reiterating to me the importance of continually updating your blog. Albeit it was a camera phone but he was thinking. I unfortunately was not. This is the only picture I could get of him.

And yes, it was also on a camera phone.



- until next time,
Catzie