Within the first seconds of CoCo, viewers know things are going to get grimy. The video unapologetically shows the gutter grind of the cocaine business with OT Genasis (real name Odis Flores) and his red-eyed posse members drinking, smoking herb and measuring and weighing baggies filled with China White. The first words rapped are, “I’m in love with the coco,” so there are no surprises what we are talking about here. The slow, menacing CoCo became last year’s street anthem, and with 133 million YouTube views and counting, the song still gets screams, hoots and hollers as soon as it is dropped in a nightclub.
While it seems like Genasis, who will perform tonight at Club Myst, and his love for baking soda appeared out of thin air, nothing is further from the truth. He was signed by 50 Cent in 2011, dropped after his mixtape didn’t do so well, and then eventually picked up by Busta Rhyme’s Conglomerate Entertainment. Stage-murder extraordinaire Rhymes wanted Genasis on his team because he thought his live shows were like missiles on their way to explode.
What does that mean for Club Myst tonight? Well, as soon as the chimes of CoCo are played, the place is going to blow up as the whole crowd chants in unison, “I’m in love with the coco.” Will any of Genasis’ other songs make as big of an impact? It really doesn’t matter because the people that will go to see this show tonight want to hear one thing and one thing only.
Photo courtesy of Club Myst
■ OT Genasis will perform tonight from 10pm to 4am at Club Myst, 9F, 12, Songshou Rd, Taipei City (台北市松壽路12號9F). Admission is NT$1,000, which includes two drinks
WHITE PARTY CANCELED
The New Taipei Exhibition Hall (新北市工商展覽中心) was supposed to go all white on Aug. 15 with The LOOP’s ninth annual White Party. Unfortunately, on Wednesday night, The LOOP announced that they were forced to cancel the event because of the government’s concern over safety regulations due to the tragedy at the Formosa Fun Coast waterpark (八仙海岸).
Apparently, concerns over the use of colored cornstarch have led authorities to become especially vigilant, though organizers said that they weren’t going to use any.
This year’s line up, including Dash Berlin, who is ranked number seven in DJ Mag’s annual Top 100 DJ poll, Waves of White looked to be The LOOP’s biggest White Party ever. Now, the party won’t happen, and organizers are out a significant amount a lot of money.
Booking international headliners is extremely expensive. At the very least, DJs want 50 percent of their non-refundable fee upfront before they even agree to come. This happens anywhere from six months to a year in advance. Then, the DJs want the rest of their money paid in full by the time they step off the plane in Taiwan. There are tons of shady booking agents and promoters worldwide, which is why high-level DJs only work with people who have a trustworthy reputation.
The LOOP has built this with the world’s most famous DJs and their fans in Taiwan over the last decade and a half with 2F, Luxy, the White Parties, the Halloween Massives and now OMNI. If the government wants to stop Taiwan’s network-led culture of cutting corners because people have good relationships with others, this should be commended. But to take it out on the White Party and The LOOP, who have run this event problem-free for the past nine years, and have made Taiwan a much more international city, is reactive and wrong.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would