D.C.’s Fat Trel and recent Interscope signee Chief Keef are headlining a much-anticipated show tomorrow night at DC Star on Queens Chapel Road NE. And while the venue is expecting a massive turnout, one local won’t be in attendance: rapper Shy Glizzy, who’s been banned from the show. “As of [Wednesday] we were expecting over a thousand kids,” says DC Star owner Raj Dua, “and now with this Internet going on, with Shy Glizzy not being able to come to the Star, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Chief Keef, whose lurching hit “I Don’t Like” recently received the Kanye treatment, is the ambassador of a burgeoning Chicago street-rap scene. The buzzy, as-yet-unsigned Fat Trel might be considered his D.C. counterpart. And Shy Glizzy is a local up-and-comer who came to the Internet’s attention last year with a Fat Trel diss.
This spring, Keef called Glizzy a “soft ass DC nigga” on Twitter. Glizzy responded logically with a diss record—-a good one at that. Aside from the ensuing venomous hashtag Twitter battles, all seemed to be all right enough. “This dissing, this isn’t Shy’s ‘bread and butter,’ or whatever some people say,” Shy Glizzy’s manager, Benny T, enigmatically explains. “The beef between him and Trel is between him and Trel, is a situation they’re familiar with. It has something behind that that them two know.”
That is until yesterday, when Shy Glizzy let his 20,000 Twitter followers know that he has been banned from Saturday’s show, and unwittingly inspired a #DCorNothing backlash against DC Star, with many on Twitter calling for a boycott (and some calling for a bumrush).
But why the ban? Dua says the club won’t let Glizzy in at the request of the promoter, but doesn’t specify which one beyond giving the name “Kevin” (there are several promoters on the poster). Security’s also a concern. The all-ages shows that DC Star hosts about once a month usually pull at least 1,000 kids, and ages can run from eight years old, according to Dua, to however old the oldest dude in a go-go band might be plus his friend. The club plans for the entire street to be shut down, with an even stronger police presence than usual. “When [the promoters] put the show together and then they saw all this on the Internet between both of these rappers, they already committed to this show, and they want to keep it safe for the venue and the customers,” says Dua. “And I agree with that.”
As for Glizzy, the ban isn’t permanent, Dua says. “This guy Shy Glizzy has performed at the DC Star, and he will continue to perform here at my club.”