Yeah ye-yah! (Okay, so that doesn’t exactly translate to print very well)

Over the weekend, I headed on over to Pacific Colisseum to catch a concert. Snoop Dogg rolled into town with his crew, but that wasn’t the only rolling that was happening Saturday night. With the crowd standing at about 15,000 strong (I’m guess-timating), they had no difficulty at all hotboxing the arena with that BC bud that makes Vancouver so famous. What’s interesting, though, is that security was real tight at the door, patting down each and every person coming into the arena and asking them if they had any drugs or alcohol. I guess they were a-okay with a little weed.

Now, I’m no pot smoker myself. Never touched the stuff and I never intend to, but I’d have to say that I was in minority Saturday night. After the concert was over and the house lights were turned on, you couldn’t help but notice a smoky haze filling the entire building. According to a forum post that I came across, this feloow “took the bus home that day and the whole bus smelled like kronic [sic]. everyone on that bus was baked.” Combine BC bud with a pot-promoting California attitude and that’s what you’re gonna get.

Although we arrived a good 15-20 minutes early, it still took us a solid 30-40 minutes to get inside. This was due largely to the fact that Pacific Colisseum only has one main entrance, and the security was pretty stringent. Like I said above, they patted down everyone coming through the door, searching women’s purses, and — I’ve never seen this before — yes, even the scantily clad ladies strolling through the gates got patted down… by female security officers, of course. Heh.

Snoop Dogg wasn’t the only guy there, of course. The opening act consisted of Daz Dillinger and Kurupt, together known as Tha Dogg Pound. They did their thing for about half an hour or so to not all that much fanfare. There was brief intermission and then Ice Cube hit the stage with Belly. Mister Yeah-ye-yea himself. Although his hour long set had some newer stuff, like We Be Clubbin’, what really tore the roof off of the Colisseum was when he kicked it old school. He reached all the way back to his legendary NWA days and busted out Straight Outta Compton. That was great.

Snoop came out and did his thing, but another strange thing was that he actually had a full band busting out tunes for him instead of just a DJ. There were a pair of deejays, a couple of electric guitar guys, and even a drummer. All black, of course. He also had backup dancers. Again, I was particularly excited when he kicked it old school and did Gin and Juice, as well as when he did a brief tribute to the late Tupac Shakur. He ended his set with What’s My Name.

Overall, I’d say the concert was great. The somewhat eclectic song selection provided a good variety of beats, and everyone on the stage — even Uncle Junebug — played it up for the crowd really well. They really got the crowd on their feet, tossing their arms in the air, and bobbing their heads to the killer tracks. I was almost surprised how much energy was in the crowd, considering that the majority were probably high, and well, people that are baked aren’t usually the most energetic bunch. What’s unfortunate, however, was that the sound quality was pretty poor. The bass was distorted and it was difficult to hear the “melody” behind the crackling thump. Nonethless, fun was had by all.

I didn’t take any bootleg videos myself, but YouTube is an excellent resource. Some user named Maliciousmandy took a few vids that you can check out. Here’s one of them (NWS, language):


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