Rhyme in Peace, Eyedea

Whether you know this or not, the Twin Cities has a big hip hop/rap/freestyling scene. You may or may not recognize some of these groups, emcees and DJ's: Atmosphere, Slug, Brother Ali, Doomtree, P.O.S, Dessa, Sims, Paper Tiger, Cecil Otter, Eyedea & Abilities and many more.

Micheal "Eyedea" Larsen was found dead at the age of 28 on October 16, 2010.  He died in his sleep and while the cause of death is still unknown, and frankly, doesn't matter, this earth lost a talented soul.  Eyedea impacted and influenced a lot of the artists I named above as well as many more artists.

I'm not going to pretend as though I was a huge Eyedea fan.  I had only heard of his name and a limited amount of his work before he died.  I've learned to appreciate his abilities more so after his death as I have wanted to expose myself to his multiple talents and now I wish I had the chance to see him perform in person and wish I discovered him more in depth before now.  He was the king of freestyling and won many championships. He had many artistic styles and experimented with a range of different musical tastes.

Last Thursday, M and I went to the Crown Plaza Hotel in downtown St. Paul to Eyedea's public memorial.  The room was huge, with hundreds of chairs set up in the middle.  The room had items all along the perimeter of the room including photo collages, paintings and art of and from Eyedea as well trophies and other freestyle battle memorabilia.  The casket was in the front of the room with huge video screens on each side with a photo slideshow showing and music playing throughout the whole room.

The mood of the room was obviously sad.  There were many artists there, many of whom I could not recognize by face alone (except Sims) but saw some of them in the paper and remembered them at the memorial.  There were many fans and by the end of the night, there was about 2,000 people that came out to pay tribute to Eyedea.  He even got a star on the First Avenue wall the day of his memorial.  Despite me not being a big fan prior to his death, his death has affected me and to see how much of an impact he's had on so many people is incredible. M has known and liked some of Eyedea's (& Abilities) music for almost a decade so he's been impacted quite a bit by his death.

There is a concert in celebration of Micheal "Eyedea" Larsen's life at First Avenue on Tuesday, November 9th, which would have been his 29th birthday.  The tickets are $20 and can be purchased at Fifth Element.

"But I pay homage to my melody 'cause she's the sweetest
The core of our spirit is naked
The form of its lyrics are sacred
Blanketed by the original sound of the inner vibrations
I'm floating on the soft clouds of positive creation
See, I can look at a painting and admire the colors
Or appreciate any type of art that I discover
But what I dig's invisible
It's my teacher and I'm its student
I tell ya
Ain't nothing quite as beautiful as Music."

Micheal Eyedea Larsen

Rhyme in Peace, Eyedea.

Please listen to the audio of this video of Eyedea & Abilities.  If you can't listen to the whole thing, listen from 40 seconds to 1 minute.  He was so crazy fast and smart with his freestyling, lyrics and rhymes.  If you don't like his art, that's ok but try and appreciate his ability and talents.  I know for a fact you can't do it.