MANIFESTO 2009 Power to the People!

Manifesto did it again! The 2009 festival ended at Nathan Phillips Square with a day packed with B Boy dancin', professional and do it yourself grafitti, dancing lessons, sweet merchandise for sale and most of all dope performances. Stolen from Africa was spittin' some serious thoughtful rhymes about our nation. Rochester Juice was off the chain who had some fly girls to help him dance. Promise was incredibly talented and is an artist to watch out for. Montreal native Famous tore it up minus Trinity Kris for the hit BIG MON TINGS. Zaki Ibraham helped out in back up vocals for her girl, Trini native, Ms. Tanika Charles who showed us a few warm up exercises before going onstage. T.O's hottest music producer 2 Rude himself, had to show his talent on stage with his 2 prodigies, female rapper Quinn Maeback and sexy singer Kaleb Simmons. Van City Rascalz spread their vibe all over T.O with their special guest performers K-OS and Choclair who came down with the Northern Touch. The livest performer of the night was lyrical genius K'NAAN who hit up the stage with a bangin' performance. K'NAAN reflects deep stories of the stuggles of the Somalian community and his life experiences into his philosopical music. Clearly drunk Kevin, K-OS was the last to come on stage but had to have his act cut short because Manifesto went over time. I also bumped into rapper Richie Sosa who was samplin' his mix c.d.Count Money Vol. 1 - The First Million. I suprisingly bumped into KING of New York City, legendary music producer, turntable technician DJ Premier, who started the careers of rappers like Jay Z and Nas. He was off to rehearsal for the big after party at Circa. He was going head to head with another big time Music Mon, Pete Rock. Well, I guess the hard work at rehearsals paid off because I heard that Premier killed it. I also had a chance to hit up the Manifesto hotel party and chatted with a suprisingly quiet or tired K'NAAN. He had a banana in his pocket so we broke the ice by asking him if he had a banana in his pocket or if he was just happy to see us. LOL. We also chatted for a bit with Red 1 from the Rascalz AND I seemed to have lost your digits because of my ghetto phone so if you read this............HOLLA! Special thanks goes out Manifesto's hardworking team, Cat Fawcett and Che Kothari. Can't wait for next year!