Right, this is gonna be a big one with a bunch of writing and a heap of photos, so get your eyes ready!

The Flight
So it all began with a flight to Iceland and then onto Minneapolis. After we made our connecting flight, which I was worried we wouldn't, we joked that all that could go wrong was customs... only... it wasn't so funny when they pulled us up and took us into the back room. They had nothing to go on so it was fine in the end, but the customs guy thought he was something special and was all "OK boys, let's take a walk". You don't have a gun or anything sunshine, you have a badge. Get over it.

^ A view of Iceland from the air.

^ Us on the plane.

^ At Reykjavik airport.

Anyway, we got through after a bit and hung out at the Mall Of America for a bit, which was the start of seeing a fat person on every corner. Mind you, with the amount of food places in one place, it's no shock really.

That night we hung with Crista and her friends at her flat, and they were all really cool but Chris and I had been up 24 hours and were basically zombies. So we finally got to bed after a day of flying and walking around. Knackered what.

^ The result of being awake so long.

Record Shopping and Gorillas
Tuesday was fun because we got to go to Fifth Element which is basically the best shop in the history of the world. I got some 12"s, a local rapper's CD and an RSE t-shirt. Slug's brother is the manager there and gave us massive discounts on what we bought because we'd made such a long journey, and we met Kevin Beacham [runs Scribble Jam and works for Rhymesayers] who was a top fella. Slug popped in too. Clearly he'd heard we were in town.

^ Outside Fifth Element. This place is on some Wayne's World "We are not worthy" type shit.

We also went to a Zoo and saw the best Gorillas ever. And a Polar Bear doing the backstroke. We also spoke to Manny on the phone and spoke about how big his dick is and crack pigs, where they inject crack into a pig so you can get high whilst eating bacon.

To end the day we hung with Crista's friends down by the river, and Robbie and Chelsea took me off around the locks and Robbie gave me a potted history of the city, it was loads of fun. Then he took me up to the 8th floor of a huge building and we stood on the roof looking out at the city. Beautiful end to the night.

Doomtree Interview!
Wednesday was an awesome day because I got to interview Doomtree at their house. It was originally supposed to be just the producers, but Sims, Mictlan and Cecil Otter turned up too, so it was them, Marshall Larada, Paper Tiger and Lazerbeak too. Everyone should know by now that I love Doomtree OFF so this was a major thing. They were super nice too and after the interview, we hung with them for about an hour just chatting about shit.

^ Nervous before Doomtree.

^ The world's greatest crew.

^ Just before leaving for Ohio.

Scribble Begins - Thursday
That night Crista drove us 11 hours to Ohio for Scribble Jam. Ohio is a city of crack dens. Not nice. But the festival was dope as hell. Thursday was the club night, and we saw Ernie Rhodes [a Minneapolis rapper who we drove down alongside] perform, and he was easily the best of the night. A bunch of battle rappers had sets too but they were mostly shitty. Dibbs' set was fresh though, he dropped in Dave Chappelle and Lionel Richie, can't say better than that. Met up with Adeem and DJDQ from Glue who seemed really excited that "the guy from Crossfire is here dude!" and Luckyiam from the Living Legends, who told us he needed a shit but the toilets weren't up to scratch so he wasn't gonna go. Nice. C Rayz Walz also hung with us for 10 minutes talking about the Baptist Church staying at his hotel, with a woman who had "an sticking out ass that was so high she turned round and hit my wife in the belly yo".

^ View from our hotel and us looking shady.

Scribble Jam - Friday
Friday was the first day of the event, and we got there as 2mex got on stage. I'm not a huge fan but the sound system they had was BANGING and so it sounded pretty good with him on stage. We had a walk around all the booths, looked at last year's graf and then settled down for the day's performances. Louis Logic was shit, but we can ignore that, because I knew he would be. Hangar 18 were a lot of fun, much better than I thought they'd be, same with Akrobatik. His set was MUCH better than when I saw him with the Perceptionists. The return of the Juggaknots [complete with C Rayz Walz dancing and showing his man-tits] was one of the highlights - Trouble Man live was fucking amazing. Their new shit sounds great too. We went inside for the Self Core showcase and Brother Ali and Lucky did a song each, with Killa Jewel [amazing female DJ] and the male DJ doing a little number where they played random raunchy samples and pretended to fuck under the decks, before the male DJ threw a condom in the crowd.

After that was the pre-lims for the MC battle - worst shit ever. Haha it was so bad that it was good though, and Icon The Mic King was standing in the crowd writing down the worst lines which Pumpkinhead read out, the two best lines being: "I'm from Space so fuck you" and "C is for fucking". Anyways, after that was Murs' set which was superb. He looked great with his nappy arse hair and he did H.U.S.T.L.E and Dirty Girl, so I was well happy. Big Daddy Kane was the surprise for me, his set was amazing [blah blah I expect Eric to tell me that of course it would be] but I ain't really into the older stuff so it was a nice surprise that he dropped some crazy dancing shit. And the night ended with Pigeon John was was as fun live as he is on record.

^ Hangar 18

^ C Rayz Walz

^ Akrobatik

^ Juggaknots

^ Self Core Showcase [Ali on top, Dibbs, Killa Jewel and the other DJ on bottom]

^ Murs

^ Pigeon John

^ [Top to Bottom] - Leslie looking like Devilspawn, Chris looking like he's being penetrated, Crista and one of the Nashvillains.

Scribble Jam - Saturday
Saturday was much of the same, we got more free CDs from people, free t-shirts, a free hat and all that jazz. People seemed to love the fact we were from London and had travelled over just for the event and so waived fees for CDs and shit. The Beatbox battle was the best of all the battles for me. This Australian kid started doing a routine where he'd lay down a melody and beat and then MADE IT CRACKLE. I've never ever heard anything like it. And then he threw in 2 lines from a Jehst track. Winner. He then went on to fucking breakdance whilst beatboxing... seeing someone do windmills at the same time as beatboxing whilst not missing a lick was amazing to see. He lost the final to Snuggles from Minneapolis because, in his own words "I'm out of gimmicks".

Jel was incredible live as I knew he would be. I thought people wouldn't be into him, with him being Anticon and all [which is fair enough] but Jel is and has always been, the best of that label. He had an MPC and he fucking rocked it. I loved his set, he has the best drums. Then we saw Glue, who were one of the acts I was most looking forward to, and they didn't disappoint. Adeem is amazing live, he's so good with the crowd and into his music, and they did a bunch of stuff from their upcoming album which I've heard and which is one of the albums of the year for me. Maker, the beatmaker who doesn't usually do live shit, was on the MPC next to DJDQ and it was great. Early Morning Silence was superb live. Then we had the DJ and Breaking battles - Nothing specially really, wasn't into them so much. But Ali was on as the last performer and he was as good as I'd expected. Ant was on the decks which was a nice surprise and Ali did 3 tracks from his new album [plus a spoken word about his son that I've heard before and love... not sure if its on the album though] and all 3 were great. The night ended with the MC battle - It wasn't great and the UK rapper was the biggest load of shit I've ever seen. However, there was a 3 way in one of the rounds because of a judge mixup and Deuce Leader [a white guy] was battling 2 black guys and he ended his last section inbetween them saying "Look, it's an Oreo". Best line of the night by far. Theasuraus won it, but he wasn't all that, which is a shame.

^ Top - Tom Thumb [the crackle guy] doing his thing. Bottom - Snuggles wins it!

^ Glue

^ Murs introduces Ali in his pink kicks, Ali and Ant big it up.

^ Judges for the MC battle [left to right:] Luckyiam, Iron Solomon, Okwerdz, Alaska, Illogic, Pumpkinhead, Adeem.

^ Free hats and shit.

^ Hotel shindig.

^ After the drive home from Cinci.

Video Appearing Super Stars!
So that was Scribble. Sunday was spent driving back [thank you Crista!] and sleeping. Now, Monday was the biggest shocker of all. We rang Rachel [Doomtree's press lady] and she invited us down to have a look at the POS video shoot...only, when we got there, they asked if we wanted to be in it! We said yes, of course, and despite having to sit round from 3.30pm til 5.30am, we were both involved. Chris is a passer by behind Slug when he's rapping a verse and I'm a bellhop [yes, a bellhop] in the bar when the main guy stumbles in and then gets arrested by the police. I'd never thought when I was flying over that I'd end up being in a Rhymesayers/Doomtree video, it was great. Slug hung with Chris for an hour whilst I was filming, and offered us a lift home... and all of Doomtree that were there that day [POS, Sims, Paper Tiger, Lazerbeak, Marshall Larada and Mictlan] were hanging with us a lot. Great guys. Hopefully we'll both make the final cut of the video!

Last Night Sadness
Tuesday we went shopping, where I bought some sexy new kicks, and then we zoomed out to the 2nd night of the video shoot. Not to be in it, but just to hang out. We spoke with Cecil Otter who was filming that day and I was talking to him about graf and street art for a while before mentioning the Doomtree Blowout. Now, the Blowout is where every member of Doomtree, including producers that don't normally do live shows, all do a show together. They have one this December and when we did the interview, they said we should come out to it, and we said we'd love to, but it depended on money. So Cecil, on the set, was like... "Hey, how about me and Mictlan throw a benefit show for you guys?", so, if all goes well, 2 members of Doomtree will be doing a concert and giving us the proceeds for our plane tickets so we can get out for the 2006 Blowout! What the fuck?!

^ Crista's place.

^ Pizza Lucé was the shit.

^ Street art bitches.

^ Coffee shop madness. Becky in the middle being cheesy.

^ Twin Cities biotch.

^ Props and the video set.

^ Off set faces.

^ Top to Bottom: Me and Rachel, Chris and Cecil Otter, Me and Cecil Otter.

^ Top to Bottom: Stef [POS] and Chris, Stef and me, some of Doomtree and us [Left to right:] Stef, Turbo Nemesis, me, Chris, Cecil, Marshall.

Wednesday we came home. We were sad. Crista was the best host, Scribble was amazing, we met a bunch of amazing people - Crista's friends who were all wicked, Doomtree, the crew of the video shoot, the Nashville boys at Scribble - and we didn't wanna leave. Minneapolis is a beautiful city and if I were ever to move out of London [never happen but still] I'd definitely move there.

^ Top to Bottom: New Nikes, free CDs and cap, my vinyl and Felt comic, t-shirts, safe bags and some Minneapolis art

Well, you've read all the text and seen all the pictures, so grab yourself a cookie and celebrate.

Best. Holiday. Ever.