The Wraith: Shangri La holds a bittersweet place for me. I was washing dishes at a chicken shack for minimum wage and not many hours, and I lived in a one room apartment surrounded by strangers for $200 a month. I mentioned this story before so I wont go into it again but I will say I was playing Shangri La on my headphones and I started crying because it gave me hope from the very first few tracks. Took me away, as it were. And I'm not religious, nor was I then. 

The Opaque Brorherhood arrived at my house from ordering it after my brother was killed in NC. That album has always had a very strange effect on my psyche. It sounded so much more intense at that time. It reminds me of driving down this road that had vines and strange plants in the summer, I had to drive pretty far to get to work. Just an odd and tragic time.

It was a pretty dark time when it came out for me but at the same time I still had my core group of friends that went to shows together in either Pa or Baltimore. A few months later a pretty painful event was set in motion but while things were getting to that point I saw a Twiztid show at Mr. Smalls in Pittsburgh.

You see one of the people I was friends with and her boyfriend were at that show. A commonly known fact was that she wanted nothing more then Monoxides meat bag and she not only had achieved this goal but through the coarse of subsequent shows he called her to make sure she would be going. Well she would at some point start dating a man who was literally covered in Tats relating to Psychopathic and while I cannot remember the exact year, he won a contest at a Gathering related to them.

I'm not sure if he ever covered the Freekshow faces he had but we all laughed about how he had tattoos of the man who consistently fucked his woman, even as they were together. The boiling point was at this particular show at Mr. Smalls. Pickles came out and motioned towards the crowd. Many ladies screamed and hoped he was motioning to them. I looked at my girlfriend at the time and said " oh shit, it's about to go down". She looked confused and not wanting to upset my other friend besides me further. I explained that's Pickles, he's with Twiztid and that hand motion was for homies girlfriend as she made her way forward and eventually backstage. I can't remember the order of performers before Twiztid but about 15 minutes later either Roc or Abk took the stage. All while the ninja besides me got more and more angry. Roughly about 40 minutes later she returned from backstage and made her way back to the crew and discussion occured that resulted in her being told she better hope she can find a ride because he wouldn't be giving her one back home.

For the next hour or so. A heavily tattoo man using his funds from selling weed proceeded to throw full bottles of water, quarters,lighters, and anything else not nailed down at like 90 mph at Monoxide and damn near getting him in the forehead a few times. We ended up giving her a ride home and as a reward we got pulled over because the strict as fuck laws over litter and her tossing a cigarette butt out the window. She proceeded to argue with the cop and while he went back to run information about us. I explained she needed to shut the fuck up because a big ass blunt roach was in the ashtray and I had weed on me. Thankfully she complied and the car wasn't searched.

There was also the time a jack ass friend took us on a road dedicated strictly to buses on the way to a Tales from the lotus pod instore in Pa that resulted in a car search and weird conversation about why we had about 50 bottles of Faygo of various flavors with a police man. Pittsburgh use to represent hard and get all sorts of fresh shit. Like the time Twiztid was on the Freekshow tour and Violent J came out with no paint to assist during First day Out during a time you typically never saw ICP without paint