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Aug 10, 2007

Rakim at Rock the Bells bonus footage · by Rafi Kam

Don’t blame us – blame Guerilla Union’s publicist. She’s the one that said no video from the press pit and the one that wouldn’t respect the Internet Celebrity gangsta.

She’s the one that made us go under the XXL name instead of as independents. And the one that said there would be a press pass for a writer and a photographer but absolutely no way could we get a 3rd…. She’s also the one that said we should stay in the press tent when we’re not shooting artists and that we needed an escort to go in and out of the general crowd area.

But you already saw we don’t get down like that.

For a few minutes we did manage to have all three of us in the press pit, Dallas handing a press pass over the gate to our director Cas. Cas went at it, shooting video with a tiny camera that we hoped wouldn’t get noticed while all 3 of us stood a few feet from dozens of overly-eager security. In this fashion Rakim’s set started and when the three song photographer window was over I looked up from my camera (Rakim photos here) and found both Cas (for shooting video) and Dallas (for passing his credentials off to Cas) had been kicked out of the press area. Good times.

Cas did shoot some lovely video in those few minutes of Rakim proximity though. But his tiny camera was ill-equipped to be near arena concert speakers and the audio was all f’d the f up, so Cas has made a little mashup of Rakim performing at Rock The Bells sync’d with the original audio for “My Melody”.

Comments for "Rakim at Rock the Bells bonus footage"

  1. Props on the secret footage!

    And you kids need to peep that article from Trickster on the Around the Horn section. We were just talking about that same subject around the j yesterday. The whole post is real spit.


    — enigmatik    Aug 10, 05:59 PM   

  2. They must be trying to capitalize with an eventual DVD. Good stuff on the subterfuge. Hell of a job on the synching.


    — sankofa    Aug 11, 09:49 AM   

  3. i saw rakim about 5 or so years ago at freestyle session. as much as i respect the guy and was hyped to see him perform, i was disappointed to catch him rapping over his own vocal tracks.

    i was hoping he didn’t do the same at this show, but this video doesn’t show me otherwise.


    — Ninoy Brown    Aug 11, 06:06 PM   

  4. I hear ya about the audio problems. I use a digital camera for all my show footage and have always had problems with the bass being too loud, which drowns out everything else going on. My solution is to stand a few rows back and zoom in and the audio comes out great although you won’t get the same up-close and personal footage…gotta make a compromise right?

    We should send our rant to the camera companies


    — Ming    Aug 12, 02:44 AM   

  5. what’s up with the lip-syncing? Is it that obvious to everyone else here? Damn. I’d be hella mad if I came to see the R, and he ain’t comin’ 100% live. WTF?


    — brreddaone    Aug 12, 08:43 AM   

  6. Gee, did you guys not read the post or the titles in the video?

    The audio didn’t come out because we were using a consumer camera 20 feet away from arena speakers, so we decided just for fun because we love the look of the video to dub the audio of the original song over it.

    Rakim was 100% live at the show – and he was dope. He used no vocal track Ninoy.


    — Rafi    Aug 12, 11:11 AM   

  7. This is terrible. You shouldn’t sych music like that. You’ve just taken the master Rakim down to Ashley Simpson’s level. ugh.


    — Incilin    Aug 13, 11:19 AM   

  8. “Rakim was 100% live at the show – and he was dope. He used no vocal track Ninoy.”

    That’s good to know, as I was hoping the show I saw a couple years back was an anomaly to how he usually rocks it.

    I read the post too. Just pointing out that the synchopated music track didn’t do anything to erase the one bad memory I had of the Microphone Fiend.


    — Ninoy Brown    Aug 13, 06:29 PM   

  9. live hip hop is boring


    — dantesevere    Aug 13, 09:07 PM   

  10. “live hip hop is boring”

    i partially agree. going to a show to watch a rapper perform might be boring, depending on the act. going to a hip-hop function and immersing yourself in the culture is anything but boring.

    actually… hip-hop is live.


    — Ninoy Brown    Aug 14, 12:02 AM