I was there when ______. (Bold statement thread)

and yet, i had no camera.

Niggas wanna know why I'm a bomb mc?
Cause I'm the one who hooked Doug E Fresh up with Ricky D
Ladi-dadi, we wuz at this party freestylin', drinkin' Bacardi, tryin' to clown
I told Slick "write that shit down"
Niggas caught speed knots, took them to weed spots
I taught Doug E and that fat nigga how to beat box
I was a Juice Crew fan
But I had BDP's back cause I never liked that nigga Shan
Scrapped with G Rap, threw bolos with DJ Polo
Kane was dj-ing at the Riz, heard him bust, told him go solo
Money-earnin' with Heavy D, it was me
Who told Craig Mack to leave Troup and EZ

Niggas wanna know why I'm a bomb mc?
Cause I sold Chuck D the ninety-eight and the uzi
Moved from Park Village to the Alta-D
Then I showed Broadway how to work the SP
Hooked Luke up with them big booty bitches in the bikinis
Got Jermaine Dupri that job poppin' for Whodini
Put Show down with pimpin', told him how to gain the stunts
Flew to Jersey to show Red how to roll a blunt
Came back lovin' his promo
Heard that madcap shit, called my nigga Coke, told him to go solo
Niggas know why I'm a bomb mc forever
Cause I tried to keep EPMD together

I was on my way to go snowboarding in PA, 30 minutes too late. I got onto I-95 at 3:30, and got off an exit later...which took two fucking hours.

Also, Richey Manic was driving that Firebird.

(NB that might not have been true)

Ha ha -- I was there too, but only in the afternoon when the vibe was still all partylike. Me and my girlfriend and a few other friends were hanging out in London for the day, but we had to catch a train back to Manchester in the evening, so we cut out before anything really happened. Just a lot of speeches and kids with anti-Maggie signs and stuff. We took photos, which I still have somewhere. But so then the whole riot and everything happened while we were in transit back north, unbeknownst to us, and when we got back to our house our roommates were all freaked out because they'd been watching the coverage on TV and they thought we might have gotten caught in the riot, trampled by police horses, tear-gassed or whatever. Instead, we were playing card games on the train. So, we were there, but then again, we weren't.

with some friends, hung around all partylike, Tony Benn came made a brief speech and went back to his birthday party. Decided to make a move round about then, and wandered down towards Charing Cross. About then, things started happening and various police vans started arriving, pushing through crowds. That was when things got even more heated but even then it was fairly even tempered, I lost my friends while (with a few people) helping police re-erect some crash barriers and get behind them. But the vans pushed through anyway, people close to getting run-over, more shouting, a brick smashed against the windscreen (picking brickdust out of my hair the whole weekend..). I saw various 'pensioners against the poll tax' with head injuries from being manhandled behind barriers (I'd given up helping when the 'assistance' from the boys and girls in blue got a bit too forceful for my liking), and looking down an alleyway seeng loads of bobbing heads, and ten minutes later realised that they were all riot police on horseback, decided to get the hell out (close enough to the station by then..) So I went for a cappucino at the entrance to the station (I was hanging around just in case I found my friends), about 1/4 hour later went back out and saw trafalgar square covered in people running, avoiding horses or defending themselves against attack, it all looked like some kind of weird magic roundabout.... So I went back and set onto the tube to ealing broadway station, where my friends were waiting for me with some relief that I was OK (Me for them too). And so we went home.

Monday morning, a telegraph reader was like "So, you proud then?" I say, give me that paper, and read. I:"Have you read this", he"No.." I:"This is actually pretty accurate" and so he did. It was not the work of anarchists, there were about ten, tops, with black flags. Or 'activists'. Or nutters. Normal People. Nice people. People the telegraph would approve of.

It was a couple of years before I felt not-weird at trafalgar square.

(sadly, these events took place in the Metrodome. Ugh.)