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I first met Q-Tip at last year's NBA2K game launch, where we had a friendly lil' battle of the boros. This time out his publicist invited me to capture his rehearsal and subsequent performance at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks' season-opener. Even though the Garden's been constantly scandal-ridden and there are very definitely a few totally creepy newspaper photogs and writers (but certainly not all of them, just a few) whose politics and intrigue make it an at-times fairly sickening affair, as a kid from NYC, it's still fun to be standing at the gates as the crowd roars and Clyde Frazier glides by, looking sharp in a black leather suit - I remember when the PUMA Clyde came out, I was like seven years old. One of my brothers saved his money and bought a pair of blue and white Clydes, coolly deviating from sporting Pro-Keds, which were the kicks of choice back then...only to have our German Shepherd piss on 'em. I laughed at the time, but looking back, that was some cold shit to have happen to one's shoes.

Just before he hit the stage, I couldn't resist leaning over to 'Tip and telling him to rep his boro and show these people what love looks like -- we pounded on the affirmation that THIS YEAR would finally be the Knicks' breakthrough season, and we believed it. Anything is possible...Then he took the stage, raw, just the MC and DJ Scratch, who Q-Tip gave outro duties to, and DJ Scratch simply had to wreck shit for just a second on the decks, kinda reminding everybody where it all started - on the decks.

During the rehearsal, which I also filmed, Q-Tip couldn't resist the pull of good old scratch and mix, and he did a respectable, spontaneous bit of tag-teamin' with DJ Scratch, who reminded the legendary MC why he was the DJ and 'Tip held the mic, puttin' his body full into the mix as it were, as you'll see. in Clip 3 he does the Knicks' theme song, in Clip 2 Q-Tip performs "Gettin' Up" from new album, Clip 1 is the rehearsal in the empty stadium, which just a few hours later would become a mad house...

Speaking of mad houses, a little editorial, albeit it on another sport: R.I. P. Yankee Stadium. After nearly a century, Yankee Stadium is being torn down and a new stadium has been built across the street where I grew up running track and playing football. The broken promise of genuinely useful replacement parkland, the city bond hoax and the fact that stadiums are simply a scam is enough to make one lose his cookies, but what I don't get at all is how, in a post-9/11 world when we're supposed to understand the value of consecrated edifices that have stood through so many epochs, how is it that Yankee Stadium, which is basically a national landmark, could be allowed to be torn down? I can't say it any plainer: this breaks my heart. So now, after being a Yankee fan my entire life, I am throwing away my hat and I will never go to a game in the new Yankee Stadium, nor watch a game on TV nor check a box score. I no longer have a baseball team to call my own -- I simply ain't down with that kind of greed and waste. Hell, the block Madison Square Garden is on is a fine example of how NY already tore down one of the greatest landmarks this city had, the original Pennsylvania Station.