This past Monday night was a hell of an experience. Jimbo and I got to shoot the shit a little bit with Chiddy Bang and XV at Karmaloop on Newbury St. before we went over to their concert at Harper’s Ferry in Boston…which was beyond awesome.
It’s always a plus when the guys behind your favorite music of the moment are actually humble, appreciative people. They’re just a couple of bros that are riding out the momentum they’ve built for themselves. (Hit the read more button for the rest of the story and exclusive footage)
I don’t know if Xaphoon was bullshitting me and just being a nice dude, but he was appreciative of The Chuckness, and recognized how long we’ve been posting their tracks. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, cause it makes me feel good about myself that he notices us sharing their music. As for their debut album, Chiddy was hesitant to say when it was dropping, giving me a casual “I don’t know man…”. Xaphoon mentioned a little disagreement between their UK label and US label in regards to an album release date –so I left the brief hang-out session without a clue as to when it’ll be released. Other than that, we just talked about the grind and bewilderment that comes with their first headlining tour in the US. They’ve literally been on the road for more than a month straight, doing sold out shows from Colorado to Ohio essentially every night. Crazy shit.
XV also caught me by surprise. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve had a handful of his tracks for a bit, but I’ve yet to fully listen to his material collectively. After talking to him at Karmaloop, and watching him kill the Boston show, he’s my new favorite up and coming rapper. Hailing from Kansas, he was telling us about how completely ridiculous the feeling is to be signed to a major record label (Warner Bros. Records). He equated it to making the NBA, but was also quick to say that he’s just at that point where it’s borderline impossible to comprehend what’s happening for him and his career.
As for the concert itself, it lived up to all of the hype that I went into the show with. There was an intense lineup before Chiddy Bang even came out on stage, consisting of The Dean’s List, Donnis, and XV. Like I said before, XV absolutely killed his set and made me a certified fan. Chiddy and Xaphoon followed, and ripped through select tracks from both of their mixtapes for the better part of the hour. They even incorporated some new shit off their upcoming album, one of which had a Pharrell feature, another featured Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest. Toss in a little freestyle from Chiddy, and we had ourselves an epic show. To be honest, I thought Xaphoon was just gonna chill by a computer all night and DJ his own songs…I had no idea that he was nice on the drums. I brought my video camera to the show and snagged some pretty sick footage, so hit that below…shit got a little wild when they went off on “The Opposite of Adults” as you can see…looks like I was in the middle of a stampede.
Anyways, as you can tell by the footage below, if you haven’t seen Chiddy Bang live yet, put that on your list of shit to do. Unbelievable show, and I’m getting ready to book my tickets for their November show at the House of Blues when they come back to the city.
