This Saturday, our CMJ space was paid a visit by two particularly amped visitors from the City of Brotherly Party-Rocking: the dancehaller known as El Feco and our "surprise guest", none other than Prince Of The Roc, Peedi Peedi. BRDIIIIIIIINNG!!
Even though he was the day's only reggae artist, Feco took no shorts whatsoever, sweating through an intense set of his own jams (Philly club hit "Say So", the Led Zep-sampling "T.G.I.F."), tacking new verses onto Jeezy and Akon's "Soul Survivor" and a one-drop remix of Alicia Keys's "You Don't Know My Name", and emphatically shouting out singalongs and dedications to "all the ladies", like our little Orchard Street stage was the greatest show on earth. He even sang a song about his daughter, and acted out the interludes where he's talking to her about doing her homework. Aaaaw!
Now before we talk about how P. Crakk got up and killed a 20-minute set of hits from the Chain Gang, we've got to admit that we were more than a tad bit shook about whether or not the PR rap dynamo was actually going to show. Sure, his manager assured us that it was a go and that Peedi was psyched to do the show before heading to a NORE/Pharell video shoot later that night. But then hitting the turnpike at one o'clock turned into hitting the turnpike at four o'clock turned into us accidentally directing them onto the Manhattan Bridge instead of taking a left off Canal St turned into it being 7:30 and still no sign of Peedi.
Fortunately, Crakk and Co made it to the spot minutes before it was scheduled to close, and we managed to stay open long enough for them to blaze through a clutch of songs - "One For Peedi Crakk", "When You Hear That" (complete with a special ODB dedication), "Got To Have It", and "Flipside" - and close out the final day of CMJ with a live-wire energy unlike little else at the festival. After everyone left, we cleaned up, shot some interview footage, and talked about the realness of Metallica.
Then we took the Rocarican around the corner to Max Fish, but that's another story for another day...