Mixtape Awards (Teen Version)

Mais oui. The Mixtape Awards last week were a montage of bananas and binoculars (a word further immortalized in SPIN this month by Matos, who’s easy with the hollers. Thank you, Matos.).
I went straight to the awards from thurrrapy; normally I like to roast in my own pathos with a movie post-head-shrinkage, but tonight it felt right to make a public appearance. Because I was already amped from the cheese sandwich they proffered at the listening sesh. Because Sasha was blowing-up-binoculars as we tromped through Times Square, with all its vegasy pulsation, spitting cold-breathed excitement from the thump of hearing one of Pharrell’s hottest beats ever. (6/28, amigos.) Because I felt like we were teenagers at the movie theater on a Friday night, free and giddy and twittering about Ludacris: unsupervised and wanderlusting for the city, cast in immediacy, bubble pop electric.
I got to BB King’s just in time to sweat and catch the end of Stat Quo. That corny new Rap City host was at the helm; when it was clear the actual Awards Ceremony was slowgoing and tres boring, Sasha beckoned me to the retiring room, with its paradise of rappers and DJs and the usual array of industry people. “I just spent an hour talking to Chamillionaire and Buckshot,” Sasha gushed, more breathless than if HE HIMSELF had been handed a prize by Just Blaze and Saigon (“New Yorker Critic Most Likely to Cover the Mixtape Awards,” probably).
In the secret room, DJs and rappers were hugging and pounding each other willy nilly, an unexpected love-in that got butterflies in me stomach. (I conveyed this to kris later, he said “It was probably the ecstasy they were handing out at the door.” Cynic.) I also contracted gawker’s ADD, proving I am both dorky and 14 at heart. (You can’t really blame me; Common is FINE, okay?) Met Chamillionaire (mouth full’o’platinum underscoring the sweetest smile in the South), talked to Pitbull, an articulate, whipsmart sweet potato who loves dancing (did I place a personal ad? Culo!), and to DJ Vlad, who insists he makes no $$ off his “Promotional Use Only” CDs. Vlad explained most of his mixtapes being sold in New York and online are in fact bootlegs of the bootlegs, dividing and multiplying like germy germs and depositing nothing resembling hard cash into his PayPal account. He just does it for his reputation, he said. It’s cool, though; dude is clearly making pesos off something–his custom red patent leather Nike AF1s were not birthed by the stork. (FYI, mixtape DJs are playing high-stakes Texas Hold’m of the shoe game.)
That’s about when Sean Combs walked in with an entourage of 29,028 people, wearing the biggest diamond earrings I have ever seen and drinking Cristal straight from the bottle. He is his own cliche.
Talked to Cuban Link, and Sasha photographed his large collection of ice du Jacob. (He’s also got a decent-sized Big Pun tattoo on his left forearm, which is the muscular equivalent of Mt. Vesuvius.) We learnt Link has just finished shooting a video with Mya for “Sugar Daddy” (a song, and I quote, “for the ladies”), has started his own record label (Men of Business), and does not think fondly of Pitbull. (He didn’t explain, told us to google it.) A man in fake-fur carrying a giant trophy belt arrived; we assumed he won something mixtape-y, and rushed him. But his award was from like, two years ago, and likely received for most vile pornographer, with grossest penchant for “Nasty H*** and Asses,” complete with two women who 1. exposed a breast and 2. chirped, coy and contrived, that they were girlfriends. Women as chattel in real life. I felt sick.
Talked to Remy Ma, who I love, and who’s very sweet and much shorter than she looks on the billboards. Was distracted from conversation with Remy Ma when The Game reached over us to give her a pound. (All I could think about was last summer, when he asked her out over the radio. So bizarre.) This very beleaguered, short white-lady reporter muscled in to grill Game on the just-squashed 50/Game beef, asking if they’d struck a deal, to which he replied, “I don’t make deals; the devil makes deals. I’m just trying to feed my son,” and walked off like some crazy ass Clint Eastwood, all seven-and-a-half-feet of him. She followed; Game’s shorter-than-he bodyguard tried to peel her off like a barnacle; she screamed unpleasantly upwards, “But DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?! I NEED TO GET MY QUOTE!!!”
This was in great contrast to Sasha, who effused, “I love hip-hop more than anything right now! I love it more than I’ve ever loved it ever!! In my whole life!!” I answered, “This is more exciting than a B2K concert! Seriously!!”