Austin City Limits (ACL) Hip-Hop _ Bavu Blakes

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to take part the 2008 Austin City Limits (ACL) music festival put on by C3. As it is every year, Zilker Park was home to several stages (AT&T, AMD, Austin Ventures, AT&T Blue Room, Dell, and BMI) over the course of three days. Many great performers, performances, sponsors, organizers, workers, volunteers, and fans made this another successful ACL for the history books.

One of this years performers was Austin MC, Bavu Blakes. Bavu is one of Austin's highly respected hip-hop artists and collaborators. Austin's Mayor, Will Winn, introduced Bavu and even admitted to the large crowd that Bavu was one of his favorite musicians. Bavu lived up the the hype and put on a great show for all those in attendance at the Austin Ventures stage. I do have photos of his performance as well as a reason for not putting them at this time, however for now, here are a couple of reviews regarding Bavu's set as well as a post performance interview..

Alex Daniel / Austin360.com Bavu Blakes Review...

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/music/entries/2008/09/27/acl_review_bavu_blakes.html

Bavu's post performance interview with Deborah Sengupta-Stith of the Statesman / Austin360.com...



Matt Sonzala of AustinSurReal.com...

"Bavu killed that shit. I'ma make the declaration here once again that Bavu Blakes is the best performer in hip-hop. I've seen everyone. Probably seen every rapper ever live. 85% of them at least. Maybe 95% and Bavu Blakes is the best performer in hip-hop. Dude comes out and does a SHOW....

Bavu even came out in an Obama mask with sunglasses while his hype man came out as Hillary. Shit was crazy. Dude even did cover songs? Like he knew he had to hit them ACLers in the head so he came out in the Obama mask as the band did "Cult of Personality," then later did "I Kissed a Girl," (for the tween set???) and "Born on the Bayou" for Jon Fogerty who'd be playing just down the way a few hours later. Strange but it worked. "

Check out Matt's full ACL report/review here.

Chamillionaire in Austin _ Mixtape Messiah IV Tour

Chamillionaire and the Chamillitary Camp rolled through Austin, last Friday, for an in-store appearance and signing. Before the actual in-store event, Cham did an interview with Hot 93.3 personality, Boogie. (You can listen here) After the interview, it was off to Music Mania where many supporters showed up to get an autograph. Cham and Famous stayed around for a couple of hours, signing posters and taking photos with fans.



Cham is currently on his Mixtape Messiah IV promo tour. Austin / Music Mania was just one of the many stops. Later that night, we headed downtown to catch the Z-Ro concert and enjoyed the entire show from the DJ booth next to the stage. Cham joined Z-Ro on stage at the end of his set and then we made our way out.

Those interested, can listen to Cham's voicemail regarding his Austin trip here...



Chamillionaire's Mixtape Messiah V will be out in November. The cover art, designed by Mike Frost / SLFEMP will also feature some of my photo work.

- OG Photographer