Ahhh, hip hop tours! Promoting tours is a risky business as it is, without the added hassle that comes with the proclivity for hip hop stars to cancel gigs at the last moment or just not turn up. Often hip hop crews are separately managed by friends and family members who can’t agree on the respective artists making it along to perform on a stage and it becomes a nightmare for well meaning promoters to deal with.
It looks like the much anticipated tour of Grammy Award winning artist Mos Def has fallen in to the category of yet another disastrous hip hop tour. After the abrupt cancellation of several New Zealand and Australian dates pretty much on the day of the gig in Auckland, Hobart, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, an interesting number of excuses have been provided by organisers as to why dates have been canned or rescheduled. These include:
– Mos Def’s DJ being ill
– The flood devastation in Queensland
– an immediate family member being unwell in the USA.
Promoters of this weekend’s Hot BBQ Festival in Portsea, outside Melbourne, have been insisting that he will be there, while other dates around the country have been hastily re-organised. However, we’re not buying it down at Tone Deaf HQ. You see, Questo from The Roots has been twittering to all and sundry about the amazing Prince gig at the Brooklyn Bowl in New York City which saw him play with Sharon Jones & The Dap King yesterday. All well and good, and we’d love to have been there as well, but according to his twitter updates; he was hanging out with Mos Def! At about 1pm yesterday Australian time, Questo twittered ‘Lol I love that Mos dresses like my cool ass grandpa.’ He then went on to say on twitter at about 6pm Australian time last night ‘‘Friend to me: “hey that guy at the prince show with that suit, was he Arsenio? The coming to america guy?” Me to her: “no that was Mos Def”.
We figured that Mos Def would have headed home to his hotel to recover from his hangover and make the arduous flight from New York City to arrive on time for his Hot BBQ show in Portsea outside of Melbourne on Saturday evening, figuring that it is almost a 24 hour flight from NYC via Los Angeles including stopovers and so on. But no! Questo and his big mouth on Twitter updates us at approximately 7pm Australian time yesterday, saying Mos Def was duck walking with Sharon Jones at the after party, no doubt while necking a hip hop artist’s favourite beverage, overpriced Cristal champagne. Questo said on twitter “Sharon is makin Mos do the chuck berry duckwalk. Prince somehow knows I got perfect pitch (“what key this in? I know you got perfect pitch).
While theoretically there is just enough time for Mos Def to recover from his hangover, make it to the airport and resume his cancelled/rescheduled Australian tour at the Hot BBQ at Point Nepean on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula on Saturday evening, we’re not holding our breath…
