Life in LA and especially life at the Poison Ivy can be surreal with all the celebrities and paparazzi, but what happened one Friday afternoon in July a few years back, just takes the cake.
Jay-Z--a big east coast rapper--was having lunch on the garden patio with his ‘posse’. LL Cool J invented ‘posse’ to replace ‘entourage’. Now, I’m just a white boy from the ‘burbs, but I know enough about the rap scene to know that there is a true rivalry between East and West coast rappers which transcends music and settles into good old fashioned street violence. Tupac and Biggie could testify to that but they're both dead.
Anyway, it goes without saying that Jay-Z has heavy professional security, that literally stand out in front of the restaurant like the secret service does for dignitaries. These are serious dudes-definitely packin’--you can always tell ‘cause they don’t tuck in their shirts.
Everything went fine. He’s actually a nice guy. Jay-Z and the posse had a good time. They paid, tipped big and left. End of story? Read on...
10 minutes after they left, a large flat bed truck pulls up right in front of the patio. It has a ‘jail cell’ set on back, complete with iron bars, beds, and black people--you know the typical stuff you’d see in jail. And there’s this band! Guitar, bass, and drums, with sexy girls, and big black bouncer types. And they have their own posse of guerrilla videographers that jump out of a few cars.
And their hammering out some catchy R&B/rap tune live. At first I thought, “Oh, this is some unsigned band trying to get attention. Maybe they knew Jay-Z was gonna be here and they’re trying to get his attention...but no!
Out from behind one of the big dudes comes Snoop Dogg himself, all tall and wiry with wacked out buckwheat hair. And he’s singing,
Your fooling yourself,
your fooling yourself,
your fooling yourself!
And then launches into a bitchin’ rap. This went on for at least 5 minutes, then abruptly ends with Snoop Dogg slamming the jail doors shut with a BANG, taking a bow, and the truck speeds off.
We were floored, and the restaurant was still pretty busy and the customers couldn’t believe it. Now my head started spinning. Was this a coincidence? Was Snoop Dogg, who, by the way hails from Long Beach, doing a video, or was he sending a message to Jay-Z, who had just left? Was he saying, “You may act like this bad ass hoodlum, but you’re eatin’ at whitest, richest place on earth. Of course, as the lyrics were kinda spooky in a “We’re comin to get ya’ kind of way...” we pondered if this was gonna end up being some video that mocks the rich clientele in general.
We speculated on this for a while, but then had to serve another $30.00 salad. After all, it was just another day at the Poison Ivy.
10/30/08
PS--thanks to Penny C @ Universal Music Publishing for the Rapper Spell Check
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