LUDIC LOG

May 14, Kuwait City. I got a good feelin' about this tour. Ain't all of us supported the war and shit, but we all feelin' the love from the troops out here. We all pretty much down with supporting the troops no matter what, and there's a lot of brothas in the army who are true hip hop heads. Also, it's kinda dope to be down with the USO, like some old-school Andrews Sisters shit. We head to Basra tomorrow. I'm excited.

May 17, Basra. I didn't think it would take so long to get here. I also didn't think they'd be quite so many minefields. I mean, I thought that was just some shit a nigga say, but it turns out, no, there's minefields. And you can't be rippin' through no minefields at 60 per in your Hummer. I only wish Nore ain't had to find that shit out the hard way. The medics say they thing they gonna be able to reattach most of the leg, but we went ahead and dedicated our set to him anyhow, kind of a nice gesture, like. Other than that it was a good show. 6th Infantry Division, they down with us.

May 19, al-Aza'ir. Okay, how that muthafucka with Community Liasion back in Basra said they was just out of Cristal? That was bullshit. It turns out you can't get no Cristal in this whole goddamn country. I asked Sa'if, who's our interpreter and shit, how he could hook a brother up with some Hennessy or somethin' and he just stared at me like I was stupid. I'm hoping that there's a decent liquor store at al-Nasiriya. Gig was pretty good, although there was only about fifteen people there. They had a lot of energy, I guess.

May 21, al-Nasiriya. There ain't no liquor store here. You ain't gonna believe me if I tell you why. I'll give your ass a hint: it's the same reason there ain't no decent titty bar here. Show was good; we had some of those Air Force dudes in the audience. They muthafuckin' wild men.

May 23, ad-Diwaniya. Show was the muthafuckin' bomb! The audience, which we thought would be mostly Army guys, had a lot of locals mixed in, which was dope. Those niggas gave us much love and really seemed to dig where we was comin' from. They all seemed to give up the applause at the same time, though, which was a little fucked up. The only time we got some real spontaneity was when Benzino gave a shout-out to Allah, and as it turned out, they got a little too excited over that and the MPs ended up shootin' a couple of the guys who were hollerin' the loudest. That kinda put a damper on things, because we were gonna give them t-shirts for bein' so enthusiastic. Also, Col. Hastings said for Raekwon not to use the "bomb like Saddam" line no more.

May 25, al-Najaf. I'm startin' to get a little sick of this shit. It's like two hundred degrees in this muthafuckin' place, they ain't no place for a nigga to get no Cristal, no bitches and no buddha, these ready-to-eat rations fuckin' suck, and the gig got cancelled because of a dust storm and because a Shia militia shot up the power generators. Which is probably just as well because they only was 32 people in the crowd and 20 of them was Army guards. Busta asked a bunch of kids "yo, where my al-Najaf heads at?" and one of them shot him in the foot with an AK.

May 27, Hilla. Hilla ought to be called hella. Like in hella boring, and like in the mullah, whatever the fuck a mullah is, got hella freaked out about Jizza's dancers and ordered them "banished", and like in Jeff's turntable solo was full of fuck-ups of the cut because the motor and the needle and the grooves of the records and every other thing in his goddamn kit has hella sand in it. Also because my celly bill is gonna be hella high and Col. Hastings threatened to have me arrested if I use the Army radio equipment again. I think Col. Hastings be some kind of hardcore racist, yo, 'cause he keeps mentioning how much he likes the Charlie Daniels Band and he won't tell us where the officers' tent is because he don't want no "incidents". I'm 'bout to incident my foot up his ass.

May 29, Karbala. Damn good set, until the sniper showed up.

June 1, Baghdad. This shit was more like it. Biggest crowd we've had so far, everyone was super tight, the troops gave us much love and energy, and the locals seemed real into it after they explained that we weren't part of a reeducation batallion, whatever that is. Busta had that big iron Saddam head set up in the middle of the set and Spliff Star tagged it up real proper. Some of the boys in the Marine Corps even brought us some Cristal. Well, really, it was just flat Sprite with "CRYSTAL" written on the label, but it was cool of them to try. It was one hell of a show, right until Big Boi and Andre launched into "B.O.B."

Man, talk about bad timing. What are the odds?