Roach Gigz Interview Leftovers
I talked to Roach about never seeing Mac Dre live and Halloween in the Castro. Didn’t make the final edit, so I thought I’d share here:
Willy: Do you have a pre-show routine?
Roach: It’s different every time, man. Most of the time it involves gin, though. Besides SXSW — that was another time where I was performing that I know nobody was gonna know me, and I was just gonna have to do my thing. I know this is gonna be just like that.
W: Really?
R: I don’t think nobody knows me out here. Compared to like, I just did Sacramento on Friday, and — oh my god! — it was crazy! At the Colonial Theater.
W: That’s where I saw Nickatina. I was sixteen and we left before Mac Dre went on, because we had to be up hella early that morning.
R: Oh my god.
W: Like, when I was sixteen I listened to Nickatina and Cellski and all those dudes from SF, but I hadn’t gotten into Mac Dre yet. Left before he came on, then missed another show [Mac Dre] had in SF, and then I was like, “Well, I’ll see him, eventually.”
R: And then it happened. That’s crazy. I never got to see him perform either. He was supposed to perform in San Jose, you how Wild 94.9 used to have the Boo Bombs in San Jose? He was supposed to perform there. And that was the first time I was going to see him perform. On Halloween, we was in the Castro, cause Castro used to be poppin, 106 [KMEL] had the booth and everything, and everybody was dancing to Mac Dre, and doing hella shit. And then the next morning everybody was getting text messages that he died, and we were like “I don’t believe that shit” — cause we’ve heard it before, like the rumors of his death, cause he popped too many pills, whatever, I didn’t believe that shit. And then you find out it was real, like “Oh my god I’m supposed to see him this Friday! What the fuck” And you never get the chance. He’s my biggest influence, I’ve got him tattooed on my arm. Like, I really fuck with Dre.
W: You can hear it in your raps, too. Was that the year in the Castro when, like, hella people got stabbed?
R: I don’t know. That was the year before that. It was either the next year of the year after that there was a big shooting, like ten people got shot. It was a Lakeview and Sunnydale thing, again, like you were just talking about earlier. And then they shut down the Castro after that.
W: That’s a bummer, man. That was so fun in the Castro. That kinda encapsulates the whole thing about San Francisco, like it’s reputation to everyone and what it’s actually like to live there — like some fucked up shit happens there in the Castro.
R: That’s the thing, it’s this combination of everything. Like if you grew up there, it’s so small, you’re kinda exposed to everything in one way or another, some degree of separation you’re exposed to everything, so it’s kinda all there. You know what I mean?
