A Hip Hop Yankee In King Austin’s Court: Birthplace Magazine’s SXSW Music Festival Recap [With Photos]

My mission was set: Travel to the yearly South By Southwest Music Festival (SXSW), held for the past 25 years in Austin, Texas, to take part in the extended weekend’s onslaught of people, performances and partying, focusing on the New York artists who undertook the pilgrimage to what many call the Mecca of independent music discovery.

With all due respect to the U.S. Navy and their marketing department, those who have engaged in this annual music industry pilgrimage will know that this is not just a job, but indeed an adventure.

Leading up to the multi-day event, I compiled a comprehensive calendar of scheduled performances by New York-centric hip hop acts, as well as several individual posts detailing featured NY-area acts we deemed worthy of previewing. Talib Kweli, Wu-Tang Clan, Skyzoo, Emilio Rojas, Tanya Morgan, Das Racist, Homeboy Sandman, Immortal Technique and many more were listed, demonstrating a fairly wide spectrum in terms of rungs on the hip hop ladder of commercial success.

From a New York perspective, we were pretty well represented.

As for my mission, the trip immediately delivered a good omen. Not five minutes after my arrival to sunny Austin, I was giving a pound to Brooklyn rap juggernaut Joell Ortiz, in town to perform as ¼ of hip hop’s newest “supergroup” Slaughterhouse. Named one of our inaugural “5 Reasons Why New York Hip Hop Doesn’t Suck,” my hometown pride already jumped a notch knowing that Ortiz and NJ-representative Joe Budden (also a “5 Reason” honoree), would be in the proverbial house.

But it wasn’t only mainstream A-listers I was interested in seeing. Frequent readers of Birthplace Magazine know we fully support the independent artists from our area, and my first day in Austin immediately pointed me in the right direction. Almost as if to telepathically let me know that my mission was indeed approved by the underground hip hop gods, a random stoplight encounter with two-car caravan containing Hasan Salaam and Rugged N Raw (currently performing together as the buzzing duo Mohammad Dangerfield), along with fiery veteran MC and Viper Records owner Immortal Technique, let me know that even 1,500 miles from home, I was indeed in the place to be.