As the bridge of brick called underground hiphop keeps crumbling, every year around this time artists like myself that are trying to find a foothold take this time to reflect. I spend a lot of my day emailing and calling promoters only to have them not respond and there are certain points in my day when I say “the hell with this” and go do something else more productive. Right now it’s got me reminiscing on what got me here.

First of all where is here? I’m not even sure. I read some reviews and write ups about me and people use descriptions like “Philadelphia legend” or “underground staple” and then I go elsewhere and read things that are much less flattering.

I honestly can’t answer that one for you but I can tell you I’ve lived a lot of my dreams getting to this point. I’ve also taken a lot of risks and thought outside of the box to get myself here. One of my most talked about but never disclosed risks was the Greyhound Ameripass scandal.

From discoverypass.com:

“See the USA and Canada by Greyhound. Travel both countries with a name you can trust. It’s one of the most economical ways you’ll ever find to discover the sights and attractions on both sides of the U.S./Canada border. With attractively affordable pricing, Greyhound’s North America Discovery Passes encourage you to travel far and wide. And with unlimited travel and unlimited stopovers, there is no need to restrict the distance you travel or the length of time you stay in one place.”

Sounds like their pitching to overseas heads that don’t know how awful the “Devil’s Chariot” actually is.

Towards the end of 2004 my homey Ceschi told me he had a hook up for the Greyhound Ameripass and he was using it to go to North Carolina to visit his girl all the time and I think he even took a bus to Los Angeles (Sidebar: Dos and Verbs wanted to put money up for me to go all the way there and all the way back to Philly without stopping or showering) so I was like hell yeah let’s hit up your connect and get that done.

Ceschi being one of my best friends was like yeah sure I got you and he emailed me a Word document. I was thinking we’d go to the bus station and someone would hook me up. Nope! He showed me how to edit, print, cut and laminate this document. It was literally just a white piece of paper with some printing in a font similar to Courier New. Ceschi cut it on a paper cutter in my house. It wasn’t even a perfect rectangle more like an unexaggerated rhombus. He laminated it on one of those small travel laminators. There was nothing on the back of the paper. Needless to say I was very leery…thinking to myself “there is NO WAY this is gonna work.” He told me to put it in a check book holder and put my license in the other side and kinda just flip it open like a police badge.

I can’t remember the first place I went with it. Oh I think it was from Richmond, VA to Philly after a show I did with Pumpkinhead at the Nanci Raygun. I remember standing in the line thinking this will never work but fuck it if I get caught there’s a lot of places to run. I’m very much a “no risk no reward” type. So I waited and waited until it was my turn to board the devil’s chariot. To my utter amazement the driver barely even glanced at my counterfeit Ameripass. I boarded the bus and it was not so smooth riding from there. (whoa unrelated flashback…i.b.i-fly)

I remember calling Ceschi and talking about how ridiculous it was and how the dude barely checked the pass and this and that and he explained to me how many times he’d done it and how it was always like that.

After a few more rides up and down the east coast that went just like that. Even times the pass was scrutinized closer it wasn’t that much a check. The driver would point at it and move his lips as though he was deciphering it. Some drivers were bewildered as though it was something that only existed in theory. Others asked me what I did that I traveled so much. I made up a new story everytime, just for fun I guess…HAHA! Greyhound became my car. I’d go back and forth between Philly and Connecticut just because I was bored.

Let me reinforce that Greyhound is awful!!! It is THE worst way to travel in North America. At least on the east coast. In the midwest I would find out they have much newer and cleaner buses and stations. (what part of the game is that?!) I once saw a station in Tennessee that was like a shed and the Greyhound sign was on a trash can. Greyhound attracts people that think they are too poor to fly with prices that are not much different than a flight if you plan in advance. It’s oftentimes a mobile halfway house. A lot of fat women wit all their possessions in garbage bags. A lot of dudes who just got out of prison and have on dress shirts and mismatch shoes that got nothing but a bus ticket.

It’s also never on time. Any amount of people can have a ticket to go to a destination and if there are too many people they MAY bring another bus but also they may not.

Dealing with all these things I took solace in knowing that I didn’t pay for it.

I remember the first time I showed Dos-Noun the golden ticket. It was at a Beautiful/Decay release party that he was supposed to perform at. I remember showing him and he was even more skeptical than I was. By that time I had already toured with Hangar18 and had even gone to Canada for free so the pass felt as though it was real. I looked it over and basically said “yeah go head wit that…”

…and then there was my trip to Ottawa, Ontario on the Hangar18/OneBeLo tour. On the way there I was detained for 30 minutes at the border. I had to convince them I was going to see Hangar18 because they weren’t performing in my city and the vinyl that was in my bag was “just because I didn’t get a chance to go home before the bus left.” When the border guy looked at my pass I was mortified. He kept turning it over and over. Ultimately he wasn’t all that concerned with it but I felt like it was wayyyy too much of a close call. So eventually I told them to look at the def jux site and they were convinced that that’s what I was doing. So me and my 15 copies of the IndieInBurns 12″ made our way across the border. I popped them all off at the show and on the way back I had to go through another set of self-sonning explaining to the US customs heads that I’m just the biggest Hangar18 fan in the world. I remember the guy seeing the amount of flyers I had from the show and saying “wow you must really love these guys!” after that he told me how I should get a job. To add insult to injury I came back with the illest cold ever.

I skipped a couple buses home because they were different bus companies and I wasn’t ready to push my luck just yet.

And then I perfected it the pass. I’m such a perfectionist in everything I do.

One day I bought an actual greyhound ticket, the cheapest I could find and I recreated the back of it and then printed a pass with the back on it.

That’s when everything got real!

To be continued….

-iCON