Yo Yo NYC - Busy P at Love 9/4/07

Pardon me for playing catch up here but there has been so much happening I haven't been able to keep up. Way back on labor day weekend there was that awesome Moustaches Wild party at Studio B. Busy P's set was so solid that night I had to go back for more so I hit the Yo Yo NYC party at Love with Eddie (who mistakingly slept on the party Saturday night). Got there at 11:30 or so. The place was already packed. I'd never been there before, but it lived up to the psychadelic blue light cave with a monster soundsystem descriptions I had read in the past. The soundsystem was really excellent...whoever was dj-ing when we got there was playing stuff you never though you'd want to hear, but it was vibrating through your body loud, but crystal clear - everything sounded good. The vibe at the party was really good. Everyone was having serious fun and getting down. I think the 40's may have helped too.

Probably 30 minutes or so into getting there the Trackademicks crew started their set. I hadn't heard of them before, but the day of the party I kept getting various emails about it from which I learned they are part of the San Francisco "hyphy" movement, which frankly cracked me up. When I went to Montreal a few months ago Eddie and I met this guy Ian through a mutual friend who proceeded to explain what hyphy was when we gave him blank looks when he mentioned it. His explanation went a lot like this (to be read in super thick French accent): Hyphy, it's like the new hippy. When I went out to Caleefornia everyone was just having such a good time. It's like if I die tomorrow everything will be ok because everything is beautiful, life is beautiful, it's just hyphy! See that guy over there (look over to see a bunch of dudes jumping on the hood of a car), that guy's hyphy."

Riight. We thought the dude was kind of out there and were kind of glad we were out of the loop on that one. But then somehow or another I realized that it was an actual whole hip hop movement out of S.F. and I jokingly printed this out from wikipedia before we embarked on our little adventure at Love. After having a good laugh we embraced the term "thizzle" as our own, as an alternative to hurl "...i.e. I don't know if I'm going to be able to hold it together tonight, I might thizzle all over the place". Serious fun.

Unfortunately the same can't be said for the whole hyphy experience. It was kind of fun for the first few songs, but then it all started to sound the same. So we took a little detour down Macdougal, and headed back to Love around 1, right at the beginning of Busy P's set. It's all a bit fuzzy since it was a couple of weeks ago...but he was playing good stuff, expected, but good - Justice, Daft Punk, and alot of other stuff.

I had a good time, but I thought it lacked something compared to the set he played at Moustaches Wild. It might have been what he was playing or it might have been the crowd. He played some of the same stuff as he did at Studio B that night, but it wasn't having the same effect. Case in point the Chemical Brothers' Do It Again which had everyone losing their shit and shouting along Saturday night, got only a lukewarm response from the crowd at Love, so much so that Pedro stopped fading the song out because nobody was shouting "Do it again". Other songs that had gotten great reactions at Studio B (Dizzy Rascal's Pussyhole) also didn't go over as well for some reason. There were definitely other moments and other songs that had the crowd going...but I just can't remember them specifically, and found Pedro's set from Saturday to be more consistently awesome. Towards the end things took a very hip-hop ish turn and for me it was just kind of winding down (but the crowd seemed into it). I think overall the crowd was more hip-hop than electronic oriented and that's what made the crowd vs. my reaction to the two different parties and dj sets so different. Overall it was a good experience, but just not the unstoppable dance experience of three nights prior.