![]() “We just had this vibe and connection as soon as we met.” “It was like kindred spirits right off the top. “Out of the quietness, just kicks a rhyme, a whole verse, and the whole car goes absolutely crazy,” he says. Gre doesn’t remember exactly what he said but he remembers the momentary silence that cropped up afterward and the sound that came to break it. E.P was throwing back drinks with everyone else when the impromptu performance started. Anybody who knew anything about MCing on campus knew that Gre was as ill as could be. In between squawking card games and swigs of rum, Gre began to freestyle. The two squads picked a car all their own and hooked up a thumping boom box to set the mood. The worst liquor that you would never catch us drinking now.” “Y’all had bat juice,” E.P remembers between fits of laughter, “and a gallon of Bacardi.” You can drink with us.” So the strangers rode and drank together. Gre’s cousin looked at him, then looked at her, and then, before anyone even knew what was happening, said out loud, “You don’t even got to worry about that. No one in her group had packed any booze and she was pissed. The platform swarmed with off-the-clock students. Gre and his crew posted up near the tracks, bags filled with liquor, minds at ease. ![]() They were both waiting at Union Station for a train to their shared hometown of Chicago. They were freshmen at Jackson State, a dab of Black college life nestled in the middle of Mississippi. That’s how Gre and Daphne “E.P Da Hellcat” Mitchell, the other half of Abstract Mindstate, met each other in ’90. ![]() The impetus for the drinking is less important than the fact that there are drinks being drunk and like-minded folks are linking up. Or a night when it is simply warm outside. It’s the type of thing you’ve heard before, probably lived, but definitely know: You meet the person at the place, and they’re chill and you’re chill-plus young-so you do what chill (young) people do when they have some time to kill, and end up sharing malted libations in an unbridled celebration of life. He’s telling an old story about how he met his rhyme partner. “It was the liquor that brought us together,” admits Greg “Olskool Ice-Gre” Lewis, half of Abstract Mindstate, the duo of 40-something rappers resurrected by Kanye West nearly a decade after they last recorded. ![]()
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