Last Saturday the 2nd annual Sparkfest, an all
day hip hop festival, was held at the Crofoot in Pike Room and Vernors Room. I
attended expecting to see a few good local hip hop acts perform but what I
experienced was a community of hip hop activists delivering great performances
and mixing it in with local entrepreneurs selling their philosophy on life
expressed on t-shirts. Joe Commisso and
Lamar Shathaya, the folks behind the Sparkhop website, poured their
hearts and sweat into Sparkfest as they rounded up 40 some rap artists and
whole more to pull off a day where everyone feels connected and shares the love
of all things hip hop.
A few of the notable performances I took in included, Nikki
P one of the few females on the bill shook things up on the small stage in
Vernors.
While upstairs there were so many good acts from 8pm past
midnight, they made it hard to leave the room. Robo Robb took the stage with
original beats and raps on science and extraterrestrial planetary stuff that I
can’t begin to understand all while dancing his ass off.
Charlie Beans spun some stories about relationships we could
all relate with and Nate Paulson shocked the stage with his effortless rhymes
set to the beat of M83 and other nice backing tracks.
Myke Murder did what he does best and rattled off some
furious rhymes about opening up mind and shutting off the television.
My night ended with Matt Schwartz on stage rapping about xanax and the girl of his dreams that ended up
on the cover of his new release “Home Movies”.
Besides the few pictures you see with this review, you can find more at my Flickr page. I also took lots of video from the event that will come soon to the Most People Are DJs website and may make an appearance on the MCB page as well. If you have any interest in local hip hop check out the Sparkhop website and bookmark it for good things to come.
