How I overcame my fear of busking in my hometown of New York City.

Not much intimidates me when it comes to being a performer. I've performed in front of a number of diverse crowds. They range from angry, loving, or blank stares until you come off stage and everyone tells you how much they loved your performance.(That one still confuses me sometimes even though I don't show it, and it makes me laugh a little).

  

Imagine this face staring at you for 15-30 min of your set. I wonder what goes through the head of a person that looks like this? "He's not Kanye, where's my Kanye???".







Here is your Kanye but he's giving me a face  worse than yours,lol. If you are an artist we have all been there to some extent. You can put your all into a set. Mind, Body, and Soul. Still..The stinkface.

It happens to the best of us. Then there is the angry mob. Which I have to say I enjoy performing in front of. That to me is a Hip Hop crowd, those are the types of crowds I came up through. Just absolutely no mercy! Haha! And I loved every minute of it. I know, I know, I'm a masochist.


If you don't drop a hot 16 nigga!! You in trouble!! 

Now I don't want to stray too far away from the main point of this blog, but what I've mentioned above has given me some ideas as to what a future blog will be about. Namely being dope, in front of a non reactionary crowd. or any crowd for that matter that gives you the opposite reaction you were expecting from your music.

Back to my main point. Busking was one of those things, for some odd reason, scared the shit out of me. Only through out the years of doing music have I become more extroverted and it really has given me the courage to exploit talents I never knew I had. So it's safe to say that feeling the way I did about it was frustrating to me, and I was ready to change it. So I made a post on Facebook, putting the word out to anyone who wanted to join me in doing it, figuring that a group effort would ease the pressure of not having to do it alone. 


An artist by the name Johnny Hobbes reached out to me saying he wanted to join forces. So, cool it wasn't a group but I had someone else on board which eased my mind. He also had to work up the nerve to perform in public. Checkout the videos below to see our first time out busking on NYC trains.

You can probably see how nervous we were in our first outings, but as we progressed, maaan!

We would just walk into train cars and start rapping. The nervousness was gone and we could see a greater power in doing what we were doing. We even broke off and started busking individually. I will admit it takes a bit more energy out of me than being on stage but the liberation is completely there!

"Zero Comfort Zone Hip Hop Challenge" Starring Super King Armor and Johnny Hobbes

So I have something to admit...I have a fear of performing in public places by myself or even with someone directed at a crowd. It is something that drives me crazy knowing how comfortable on stage I am and all the intense situations I have been in over the years as a MC. So I finally decided to take matters into my own hands because this shit was fucking with my pride. So I mad a post on facebook about it and another MC I know, named 'Johnny Hobbes'. He told me he had a similar fear of performing in front of crowds. So I said BET! let's do this together then. He agreed and the following video below is the result!

I kept the editing to a minimum so you could see our progress as we went from car to car and train to train. I'm going to continue this project until I ween this shit out of my system and just kill it on the trains and anywhere I go period!

Enjoy guys. Happy New Year!