Tales From The Road - LIT Monthly - August 2010
August 1st, 2010Tales From The Road
“There were some rough moments,” admits Justin Griffith (aka GOAT). “But we’re all good dudes so it worked out. We really became a family.” It is unusual in the hyper-competitive rap industry for multiple artists - in this case six - to hit the road for two weeks of non-stop “togetherness,” including sleeping six on the floor in a small extra bedroom someone afforded them. Such was life on the Southern Elements Tour this past month.
Along with GOAT, the 2010 tour included MC Astro, JackRabbit James, Kilo Art-of-Fact, DJ Trek, and DJ Croix. They covered five states and nine cities in a 14-day span, sharing some of our area’s best “intelligent rap” with the folks to our left. “We were really embraced everywhere we went,” Griffith says. That had to feel particularly good to the singer/rapper who lost family members twice during the tour. Maybe the only man alive that could handle it all - grieving, multiple plane trips, and blowin’ up the mic four or five times a week - GOAT never missed a gig. He even called the experience “the best of my life.”
“No one went to jail,” offers DJ Trek as a personal highlight, jokingly, sort of. “In San Francisco, Jack and I made our way out to Baker Beach at like 4:30 in the morning,” he continues. “We watched the sun come up over the Golden Gate Bridge. Then like 45 minutes later, a couple of our buddies show up with a case of beer, so we’re all drinking beers on the beach as the morning joggers go by. We saw some pink elephants that night.”
That was not a pink elephant! “DJ Trek and a buddy were standing in front of a house in Colorado, smoking, when they see this black figure moving [past] them,” relates JackRabbit James. “It turns out to be a mama bear and two cubs about four or five feet away!” LIT is guessing alcohol was involved as the story has DJ Trek and friend following the deadly beasts down the road with a video camera.
Like everything in the world of GOAT and his mates, plenty of video footage will be posted by the time you read this. Start your trip into the hip-hop woods by visiting MusicByGOAT.com.
The Polluted Truth
