So day 4 of the week of musical madness that is the Redbull 3Style World Championships in Toronto started a little later today ;)
We continued to catch up with our friends. 2012 world champ Four Color Zack rolled up to the Serato camp at the Thompson Hotel looking a little exhausted from the night before, but was quickly cracking his trademark jokes, and jamming away soon enough.
Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest) and Maseo (De La Soul) touched down and rolled straight from the airport where we got some really fun answers from the questions we asked them! (just wait and see…), Both of these guys are super awesome, friendly, music lovers and have contributed so much to hip hop culture it was a real honour to be able to kick it with them and show them all the new tools we had set up. It was an all star cast with Jazzy Jeff and Skratch Bastid jamming out earlier too. They had really rocked it the night before and I was rather surprised at how much energy they had still! Must have been something they were drinking ;)
The third night of finals took place at The Hoxton. Kicking off the evening was Smalltown DJs, who got the crowd moving before Torro Torro took to the stage to turn things up a notch and get everyone hyped for the performances by tonight's finalists.
Representing Jamaica, DJ Inferno was first up and came out the gate with a bunch of hip-hop and dancehall heaters. The crowd loved it, and whistles were blowing as he played a great party set featuring big tunes like Jay-Z's "Jigga", Junior Reid's "One Blood" and Chaka Demus & Pliers "Murder She Wrote".
Second to play was Canada's own Adam Doubleyou. The crowd was definitely giving it up for the national champ, and he responded by dropping a heavy set that had the house going crazy. Spanning multiple genre's, he dropped everything from Guns 'n Roses "Welcome To The Jungle" to East Flatbush Project's "Tried By 12". With his set done, the crowd was cheering on their fellow countryman.
Next was DJ Acorn from South Korea. With the hard task of following up the two previous sets, he took on the challenge with ease, and smashed out a set that featured a whole lot of scratching. Pulling out some bangers like "Who's Real" by Jadakiss, he had the crowd putting their hands in the air (and waving them like they just didn't care). Serato's Matt was especially excited to see him rocking a nice pair of Jordan 6's.
Closing out the finals was the USA champ Trentino. He got down to work by playing a gang of EDM tracks, before moving into more hip-hop, rock and pop where he used his highly technical tone play skills to work one song into the next, such as his working of 2 Chainz' "I'm Different" into Nas' "I Can". The crowd was going crazy, and as he left the stage it was clear that tonights decision was going to be a difficult one for the judges.
Before the winner was announced, A-Trak played the finale with an epic set that completely destroyed the dance floor. His crazy scratch antics and heavy hitting track selection, from EDM to Trap to Disco to classic Rap had the crowd calling for an encore as he left the stage.
Lastly the finalists gathered on stage for the verdict, and Trentino was declared the winner, earning his spot in the grand final on Saturday. There he will be joining Chile's DJ Byte and Germany's Eskei83, with the fourth finalist being selected tomorrow night.
We'll be back tomorrow with Day 5 of the action!
