Thread by @WALASIA

Coachella. I'd been the very first year ever, when it was held in Summer. It was ONE HUNDRED TWENTY DEGREES FAHRENHEIT and I was running from stage to stage taking pics and documenting for platform.net (the original website of crafted by the grafted!!)

Kool Keith...

https://twitter.com/WALASIA/status/1449602348314021892

performing inside a hot dusty sweaty tent, his plastic Elvis/Jermaine Jackson wig literally & figuratively melting into his actual scalp... It was a menagerie of dusty filthy barefoot patchouli-scented mixed with underarm-funk whitewimminz with like ... 50 BIPOC dancing on beat.

Flash forward so so many years to the @coachella with the MadVillain performance. Imagine myself, DOOM, @madlib and assorted people from stonesthrow-whateverthefuck backstage in "VIP" which is still a dusty field with some airstream trailers. Standing around, shooting the shit.

DOOM Polo'd down or with some designer brand Rugby of choice, with Mask in broad daylight. Not not noticeable. Oddly enough, the usual malegroupies kept it push, likely too shooketh to approach DOOM AND Lib together. I felt a few glances and stares, but nothing to write home on.

I was somewhat fancy but I'd been down this hot, dusty Coachella road before as a journalist/photographer/videographer so I wasn't TOO fancy. Now, everyone who knows me IRL knows I am not that swayed by pretty men, I've had the prettiest. Def not by famous ones, I'm already there

with DOOM and MADLIB for goodness' sake. Also I was born famous and my Daddy more famous than anyone who ever played Coachella, globally soooooo... Money DEFINITELY does not move me either. But there's something about @Pharrell if it is the smooth skin or the Blasian or the ****

So I feel a man STARING at me like, generating heat. I look around casually and it is ...

At this point I think DOOM had unmasked himself - at the time that was the OG, heavy metal, rusty dusty designed by @KEO61566670 Lord Scotch 79th mask. BUT real heads know what Zev Love X looks like regardless. So this whole time in my head I am like...do I go over to Pharrell

and introduce myself or ... what to do?! I don't want to piss off Dumile before his big big show, yet I also DEEP in my SOUL do not want to miss the chance to pop at @Pharrell on God. I start to move over to the side away from DOOM, Otis/Madlib, et al. As I do so I notice ...

that Skateboard P's eyes are not wandering in my direction. It takes me at least 5 minutes of Funk to realize ... He is in no way even slightly looking at me. HE IS STARING AT DOOM. INTENSELY. Like...if he was just a malegroupiefan dickrider dude I'd run up on him & get him ghost

By this time I think everyone is a bit uncomfortable from the hot and dusty Coachella // Mecca, California heat. We retire to the somewhat air-conditioned trailer which is what passes for VIP/Green Room in this dusty outdoor establishment. Once we're all seated I gave DOOM signal

that I had private matter to discuss. We used our signs & coded language to talk about the Pharrell thing. Did he want me to go get him and make the official intro? Bring him to the trailer to talk? Leave him be in the dustbowl getting his Bapes filthy-dirty? DOOM ran out of time

he had to get ready to hit the stage. I have never been the one to go on the side of the stage or the back of it at a huge venue or arena show, maybe a little one like the El Rey or something...after all, I have breasts a womb and ovaries so I don't NEED to be useless on stage.

I rotated between the "green room" area, the true "backstage" which was also a dusty filthy hot mess of a desert field with "amenities" ... not the shit the daughter of a Free Jazz Rockstar is accustomed to, that's for certain. I kind of paid attention to the show, kinda not. ...

article I read last night said that "no one" was watching Mad Villain because *AHEM* Talib Kweli was performing at the same time on another stage. Patently false. A LOT of people were watching and listening. This is the group that Thom Yorke would say has the best LP OF ALL TIME

For me, all concerts are regular unless they are SADE, Prince or Teena Marie. Since I was born in 1974 I missed the real festivals of Rock, Jazz and Soul. Nothing was exciting and my life was in turmoil. Things with DOOM were no longer professionally viable for me, ST was FUCKERY

The Coachella performance was the beginning of the end. DOOM had begged of me to "not quit" prior to MV being finalized and vinylized, and until after Coachella. I'll save the denouement for the actual book, INSHA'ALLAH/God Willing ... but it was surreal to be there and NOT BE.

NB: the pride I felt in the music and the performance to the side, the heady feeling of knowing I had just caused to happen the most important Hip Hop album of all time...none of it mattered. I was never going to get proper credit, I was never going to get paid. I still haven't.