the backwoods (v. 7.0): Arts, Beats, and Blogged out Lyrics 7.0 styleee

Well another year has passed, and we've come around to another spat of the annual "Arts, Beats, and Lyrics" celebration. This year, it was held at the Blake Hotel in downtown Charlotte. I suppose it was a step up, as far as location was concerned considering it was held at Center Stage in NoDa the previous year. Truthfully, I liked the NoDa location. It had more of an "Arts, Beats, and Lyric" feel as opposed to the somewhat stuffy Blake.

The Art Work was no doubt on point, featuring some of Charlotte's dopest artists and photographers such as; Jasiatic Anderson, Marcus Kiser (God City), Wolly Vinyl (GC), and the rest of the God City crew. Here are just a few examples of the goodness we all got to experience...

The music was cool. When we first rolled up in the spot, there was a very cute female on the 1's and 2's, along with some dude who was MCing the event. She was very cute, but most definitely was new at the whole DJing thing, as her playlist was incredibly predictable (which may or may not have been her fault), and her blends sub par at best. She lost me with the shades she had on while spinning.. Props usually mean people are trying to draw attention away from something else.. Dj Applejack did his thing up there about an hour and a half after the event kicked off. Only gripe I had with him, didn't really have anything to do with him at all. It had to do with the fact that at every hip hop event I go to, there is some kind of "Dilla" tribute.. Do not get me wrong, the guy was a great producer, and definitely had his own sound, but fuck! There are a lot of cats in the hip hop era who have passed away that we should be showing tribute too.. I STILL haven't seen a Jam Master J tribute here in Charlotte! Scott La Rock, Big L, etc.. We gotta do better.

There was a pretty cool B-Boy battle between cats from Atlanta, and the homers from Charlotte.. Don't know who really "won" but it was pretty entertaining for the most part..

Oh, I almost forgot to give props to Jack Daniels for hooking up some free drinks at this illustrious event. All one needed was a ticket and one was eligible for alcohol consumption (21 and over of course). I somehow found out a way to get way more tickets than the two I was greeted at the door with. Meh, people weren't that interested in getting a little toasty I guess. Not this woodsmen though! The rest of the night was filled with chillin with the fam, meeting some new folks, and so called "networking".