Planes, Trains & Very Small AutomobilesBoyzinadaze Part Tien Milijion

Ahhhh springtime, where did I leave off? Oh yes of course, with those very compelling photos from outside my London hotel window. What a great thing to leave you with. What is it now Wednesday? That was Sunday so yeah, there’s a lot of catching up to do.

We are right now on a train from Gotenborg to Copenhagen, and I tell you what, I am enjoying this WAY more than air travel. There are few means of travel as satisfying to me as riding on a train, in the springtime, thru Scandinavia. The fact that my seat number does not even exist only sort of bothers me. I’m ready for the old man to come tell me I am in his platz, whatever.

I’ll tell you about our latest flight incident in a minute, but let’s start with the good news.

LONDON WENT DOWN! Man it really, really did go down. The crowd was enthusiastic, the atmosphere was perfect. A-Trak and Seb Chew were in the house, but I missed them, um, Devin did a longer set than normal (Just added! “See What I Can Pull!”), and it was just really good to finally have the Dude in London. Word to Tornado Booking and Luminaire for taking the risk and making it happen on a Monday night. I was hoping more press and DJ folk and friends would have come out, but alas, London is a huge city that is hard to get around, expensive as hell, etc. I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to come from the East to the Northwest. Most of my people stay in the east. And the south. (Our taxi from the airport was $200 + tip!)

Anyway, day of show in London, Devin and I took it real easy, we had been going non-stop and Sunday night was supposed to be a night of rest. But, the TV only had 4 channels, and my mans Shaian, G and Rupert came thru, so we kicked it. It’s kind of weird, but I am still on Texas time. I go to sleep at 5 am which is 10 pm at home (It’s not totally strange for me to be in bed at 10 pm at home… yikes!) and wake up like 2 pm which is 7 a.m. at home. Which is when I normally get up anyway. It’s really weird.

Anyway the boys came thru and the prospects for weed were looking really shaky. None of my people were coming with it and we were bout to be faced with a night without smoking, which I mean, is o.k. for some people, just not really us. So my dudes said “Aw we will just go out and ask people on road mate, no worries, innit.” And I said “O.k. man well take my hotel room key and just come back up when you are all good.”

Well, they left for over an hour. I thought they either got jacked or arrested, but they came back with two small bags, $80 worth and I am talking about they were less than most U.S. $20 sacks, but whatever. It was the Cheese, and well, you know, anything is plenty mayne.

They also brought back a bucket of chicken wings and chips… Word to Sam’s!

(Oh shit these lil hooligans are standing in the breezeway of the train, and one just tried to open a door while the train is moving and a small alarm went off. They find this funny, as I would have as well at age 15, but if this train makes an abrupt stop because of them, it’s really goin’ down.)

Anyway, so we of course sat up till 5 a.m. drinking beers, smoking and eating chicken and talking about rap music (which at the moment is beginning to get old to me, but Sunday was cool as we were with some real SUPPORTERS and friends.)

I woke up at like 1 p.m. I guess and Devin and I hit the launderette across the road. $12 total to do one load of laundry yourself, washed and dried. $12. That’s $10 more than the spot in my hood in Austin. This should put London into perspective for any of y’all who have not been. That fucking city is expensive. It’s like $7 to ride the subway one way in one zone. It’s not the easiest place to function on a budget tour. But we made it through. Word to $5 falafel and also Nando’s chicken. They told me the extra hot was really extra hot, and well, yes, it’s extremely hot and I recommend it. Out thurr in Kilburn and such.

(O.k. the hooligans got off at the second stop. No one has kicked me out my seat yet. Surely it’ll happen soon.)

Just looked out the window, a cloudy day in Scandinavia is more beautiful than even the most sunny in lets say, well lets not insult anyone’s area, let’s just say this part of the world floors me.

So the show popped off. Dan Greenpeace and our boys from the Trill London DJ’s WRECKED all night and then my brother SWAY got on stage and just brought the freakin’ pain. I mean, the crowd was definitely not as big as Sway might generally perform to in LDN but they were feeling it and I for one was just happy to see how much this guy has progressed live in the years I have known him. His vocal acrobatics are something to behold. Definitely not the average MC. He did a lot of call and response and played with the crowd and got them super hype for the Dude.

When Devin hit the stage, the crowd went ape shit and as usual rapped along to every word. After the show Devin did a few interviews, we had some more beers and went back to the hotel with the other dudes. Talked about rap, drank, smoked, chilled with good southern rap supporters in London, like we supposed to.

Got up the next day and left the hotel at 11 a.m. for a 3:15 p.m. flight from Stansted Airport. Our much smarter than I agent, Fred, demanded we leave by then. Even though I know London is a bitch to get around I was like, “We are leaving 4 hours in advance? O.k. I guess.” And well, I had no idea what a rigamarole we were about to be put through.

This is the part where I go off - MOTHERFUCK RYANAIR. They are an evil company, a horrible company and I do not know how anyone could stand to work for them. Even in this economy, I know we all need jobs, but I cannot believe that anyone would ever work for them, or fly them more than once. People say “Oh they are so cheap.” They are not cheap at all and I will tell you why.

Devin has three bags and yes one of them is a big ass suitcase. We were fully prepared to pay for overage, this is not an issue, the issue really starts with other charges and works its way up to what these fucking pieces of crab apple scheisser try to charge you for excess baggage.

First of all, we were in a hotel in London that didn’t even have a phone, let alone a place to print our boarding passes. We show up at the airport, key in our confirmation number and the little machine informs us that since we did not check in online, and would be printing boarding passes with them, it would be an extra 20 pounds. That is $40 a piece straight up JUST TO PRINT A BOARDING PASS. Bullshit, and evil.

Then we keyed in the amount of bags and paid the extra money for Devin’s extra bag and went to drop them at baggage drop. Of course they were over weight, Ryanair allows for 15 kilos TOTAL while most other airlines allow for 20 kilos and sometimes 20 kilos per bag. The man looked at me in all seriousness and said that Devin would need to pay 380 pounds in excess baggage fees. That’s $700 mayne. So we argued a bit, shuffled some luggage, and somehow got it down to $200 in excess bag fees. Waited in three lines to pay for the shit, etc. It was the biggest waste of time and money I have ever spent.

Same dude told Devin he could have two carry-ons, but when we got to security they said no way, only one carry on, so we had to go back in line and pay another $40. So yeah like $240 in excess bag fees. Thank you Fred for making us go early.

So we spent so much time doing that shit we barely had time to eat anything. We ran like 15 minutes across the entire airport to the Ryanair area (they hide them from the regular people I guess), grabbed a $7 cheese and tomato sandwich and stood in line for like 30 minutes to board. Then we got on the plane and their seats are the smallest, shittiest plane seats I have ever experienced. Then they tried to sell everything under the sun on that fuckin’ plane, including scratch off lottery tickets! Anyone who would buy a “lottery ticket” from those rip off piece of shit motherfuckers deserves to be ripped off.

There was advertising blaring through the speakers for half the flight and ad’s (In Italian for some reason) on all the overhead luggage bins. I am telling you, the entire experience made me sick and I am warning you to not be fooled by Ryanair, as we were. I want to see them go out of business so bad. I’d fly to London just to do a dance in their dead fuckin’ terminal in the far end of Stansted. MOTHERFUCK RYANAIR. Never, ever fly them. You will get fucked. Fuck them.

But whatever, we made it to Gothenburg and the Dude killed it once again. Wasn’t much time for anything between landing and sound check so we went and did that, ate a lasagna, had a couple beers and then it was showtime. Did you know that there is a law in Gothenburg that you cannot have beer or any drinks in the backstage area? You have to have a special, expensive license for that and also someone to watch over the people in the room to make sure no one drinks too much. Um, it’s a bar in Sweden, everyone is pretty much going to drink too much. Including us. It is what it is, pigs.

So yeah, the show killed and I DJed a little bit after his set. ON CDJ’s all with rap music I have picked up over here. New Lars Vaular, Ralph Myerz, Keyza Soze, and then of course I hit ‘em with a little Invincible and Finale as those were the only CD’s I brought for this tour (Europe look out for both of them in July!). Shit was real fun, but then I got back to the hotel, the wi-fi was down, I couldn’t call home WHICH SUCKS I NEED MY FAMILY TIME, so I went to sleep at 3 a.m. and woke up at 5:30 a.m. then back to sleep at like 6 a.m. till 10 a.m. Yes I am doing great and YES WE CAN COPENHAGEN! Shit, we will be there before you ever see this. I assume there is no wi-fi on this here train….

Nope.