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Devin Morales
During the summer time of 2016, July to be exact, my group and I booked our very first show in Mesa, Arizona at Club Red. And the energy we felt from the crowd was like nothing any of us had ever felt before, so motivating... Considering through high school my brothers and I were constantly getting put down for wanting to take up rapping as a career, the feeling was genuinely surreal.
Seeing your loved ones jumping around showing love to your music is a feeling that is hard to beat. All you hear is a catchy melody, feel is the vibrating bass, and see is the smiles on the crowds face. It's all you could ask for as an artist on stage! We had the energy so live for our last song "Gotta Get It" that the Dj/sound engineer was incorperating instrumental effects such ass cut outs and vocal effects such ass heavier reverb at time, and light distortion. It was just sort of a connection, we had no idea the Dj would get that into it but all in all it worked and our visions worked very well together on stage. If you ever have the oppurtunity to even karaoke in front of a live audience you should take it, you will not regret it!
Let's take a journey through my mind and see how that day played out at Club Red, July 29th, 2016.
We opened for an artist that goes by the name of Twisted Insane and is signed to Tech N9nes label, Strange Music, inc. If we're being honest here, it was the most nerve racking few hours waiting to go on stage. But what made the anxiety worse was the fact that twisted insane was nowhere to be found. Me, being a young hiphop head, I was extremely excited and looking forward to meeting the first artist we opened up for. I was bugging the booking agent, the audio engineer, and even the security guards about it!! Someone had to know what was going on, at least I thought. But no one seemed to have an answer. As the time flew by I started to not care about meeting Twisted Insane but more about rocking the stage with my boys. Everyone we sold tickets to was starting to show up, shelling out love and support which got us pumped and ready. The nervousness was almost gone.
When we finally got on the stage, guess what... That dang anxiety was back. Seeing the faces of family and friends in a crowd of a live music venue is different than seeing them in the bleachers at an old high school baseball game, lemme tell ya. But sure enough the Dj started to play the first track from our setlist for the night and right when I heard the lead melody of the beat fading in, I saw Twisted insane walk in through the back door. At that moment I looked over at my brother steen and said, "yo bro how does my verse start again....?" with the most confused and mind boggled expression on my face. Steen looked at me and said "dude I don't remember right now, you wrote it!" At that moment i was so scared to embarrass myself and not remember my lyrics. It's not even that I am a huge fan of Strange Music, I just know they are all talented musically and have been in this industry/game for years so I really wanted to pick his brain. Then him not showing up on time made me think maybe he won't show at all, lol funny right? Because I was wrong and he showed right before our set started, which just had me spinning again. Still never got the chance to talk to him, maybe one day I will. Hopefully I run into him under the right circumstances and have the chance to possibly mix and master a song of his and or produce one!
