All-Star Aries B-Day Bash @ Slate



Yup yup, that’s me and one of NY’s top MC’s, Cormega, chillin at Slate last night (click the pic to enlarge). As many of you know I’ve interviewed Mega a number of times so it was good to see him again. What was I doing out and about on a Wednesday night? Networking, of course! In actuality last night was a night to have a little fun and do a lot of networking. It was one of my favorite PR contact’s birthday’s (Happy B-Day Dove!) and she was having a party in the city. Here’s a quick equation for you, spring time + industry party + NYC = I’m there. Thankfully this was an event that started at a reasonable hour, 7PM, so when I rolled through at 8:30PM it was already starting to get busy and within an hour the place was packed with writers, label people and artists.

First up I wished the birthday girl a happy birthday and introduced myself to a few other writers while waiting for my radio show co-host, The Mystery Man, to arrive. Due to subway lines being moody his arrive time was, not ironically, a mystery. The bulk of the writers I met were nice and there was a mix of experienced vets, like me, and relative newbies. It’s a little strange politicking with other writers because there’s a distinct feel of “we’re all in this together” with a very loud underlying feeling of “that’s the competition.” I think there are very few other occupations where one person can look at another and try to friends while realizing if that particular person scoops you on something they could be taking food out of your mouth. The freelancer toes a very thin line, thankfully I have great balance.

The bar also had great balance in that it had specific areas for the bar, for seating and for dancing that all flowed together nicely without any specific place feeling roped off in any way. Slate seems like the kind of place where I’d like to throw a party. Both The Mystery Man and I dug the atmosphere, even if the DJ was playing songs that were both old, and in the case of Kriss Kross, just plain stupid.

A few of the people I met last night had, at one point in time, lived in Connecticut, so having that common bond was nice. It’s always good when you can make a La Salsa reference and the person understands it. I also ran into a few people who knew of the Mindspray crew. Anytime I hear someone’s from Brooklyn I make sure to bring up Mindspray and not only did these women know of the crew, but they knew their manager. Looks like you can add a few more people to the list of who will be attending the April 29th show at The Knitting Factory!

When it came to label people I linked up with reps from Def Jam, Atlantic and Death Row East (which is not in the financial peril that Death Row seems to be in). Making these connections, and meeting some other writers, was a big reminder as to why I like these kind of events because even with the competitive nature of freelancing there’s a mutual respect going on. Take any one person there individually and put them in a regular bar and nine out of ten people won’t understand what they’re doing, but in here everyone knew and respected the jobs of everyone else.

Sightings: Lots of industry folks were at this event, but my eyes also spied a few MC’s in the building last night including Cormega, Jae Millz and the winner of Jay-Z’s contest to create a new theme song for the Nets.

Liks: For NYC I saw some pretty reasonable prices. Yeah, $7 for a run and coke may seem like a bit much but for NYC that’s actually cheap.

Verdict: I have to love any event where I not only get to have a good time, but I also get to make contacts and leave at a reasonable hour. Had the subway lines not been so slow I would have been home 1AM (I ended up home closer to 2AM because I missed my train by two minutes, but who cares, I met a beautiful woman on the subway ride to Grand Central. Can’t hate on that!). So basically it was a great night all around.

Oddness On The Way Home: I had to create an entirely separate category for this story. As I mentioned I missed the 11:22PM train, so I sat around and waited for the 12:22AM to open up. I grabbed a good seat and was ready to dive even further into The Bad Guys Won!, which is fast turning into one of my favorite sports reads of all-time, when a married couple took two of the seats to the left of me. There had just been one guy there who was obviously trying to sleep and the woman half of the couple assured him in a drunken slurred voice that she was only going to pass out on the train ride. Instead of passing out she of the blue lips and tongue from drinking too many trendy flavored alcoholic drinks and her husband had a very intense marital spat right in the middle of the train that lasted all the way from Grand Central to their final destination of Stamford. After they left I turned to the guy who was originally in the seat alone and told him I felt sorry for him for having to sit next to that. He replied that he had been trying to fake being asleep but when the argument became too good just chilled out and listened in. Gotta love public transportation! You won’t get that kind of action anywhere else!

Comments

WEKetchum said…
Just another example of why I really, really want to move to the east coast...

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