Twin Cities Week

Minneapolis/St. Paul. It's come up a few times here on this blog. People close to me know I have a chubby for the Twin. Really, it's Mpls, because I've only spent a couple hours in St. Paul, and that was to eat at one of the best burger joints in the world.

Minneapolis is a great place to hang out and chill. Everybody out there hates snow as much as people in the UK hate rain. I don't know why everybody's crying, because I love the snow and the rain! What really grabbed my attention about the TC was the music/arts/entertainment scene out there. During my first hoo-rah back in December I visited MCAD to see what they're about. That has to be one of the best art schools I've ever seen in my life. It made me want to go back to school...there, of course. But all in all, the music is phenomenal. Prince is great, but we're in the 2000s here! It's all about Hip-Hop right now.

The group Atmosphere has done so much in terms of promoting their city. Each album is littered with references of their hometown, but also outright name-drops. Add a good portion of the Rhymesayers Entertainment roster, along with the Doomtree collective and you've got the North Star confederacy. Let me clarify. People in the South are very "patriotic", and the people of Minneapolis will defend their territory to the death. It's not about America, it's about where they lay their heads first and foremost.

Beyond the tangents, on May 24, 2009, RSE put on Soundset 2009 in Shakopee, MN. It was the follow-up to last year's Soundset 2008, held at the Metrodome parking lot. The first event garnered so much attention that this year things ballooned, with interest coming in from MTV (it really helps that they're all over. P.OS. right now, and Atmosphere just last year).

MTV decided to run what they titled, Twin Cities Week on MTV2. Artists such as P.O.S., Mike Mictlan of Doomtree, Slug of Atmosphere, Toki Wright, and Brother Ali of RSE were all interviewed by the station to show it's viewers what their scene, music, and lives are all about. The artists spent some time online hyping up Twin Cities Week, understandably so, to let their fans know to keep an eye out for them.

Look, I know how this works, and it played out exactly how I knew it would. MTV does not do true features on artists. Instead, they force people to sit and watch their lifeless programming in anguish in order to see what you're truly after. These guys' segments were played during commercial breaks and in between shows with 10 minutes of mindless waste preceding and succeeding it. Needless to say, I couldn't bring myself to be turned into a troll by the one-time cutting edge music station. The people I was looking out for are great artists and nice people, and I enjoy supporting them. However, I wasn't up for it on this go 'round. The Twin Cities Week link above will give you a small taste of some of the coverage, but it's definitely not everything they did. So the next time you hear that your favorite artist(s) is/are being featured on MTV, don't put yourself through the agony. Just pretend you never heard anything. Seriously.

MTV, what did I ever do to you?