Hip Hop Slam Blog #7 of 8 on the Positive Omen Tour:     The Hip Hop Slam presents “Positive Omen” Japan Tour 2011 featuring DJ Quest, Mista B, DJ ALF, and DnZ , was six packed days that took the four US DJs via trains/planes/buses throughout Japan with stops including Osaka, Okinawa, and Tokyo where the turntablist tour came to a halt last Sunday, August 14th with a final performance by all four DJs at the East Japan DMC Finals. Also along for the tour was Quest’s son Alex – aka DJ Train – who not only worked behind the scenes with merch and sound but also got busy on the turntables at one of the venues throwing down a funk-fueld set. This blog 7 of the 8 Hip Hop Slam Blogs on the tour and include the above video of DJ Quest in an excerpt from his showcase set at the Japanese DMC battle. And below is DJ ALF’s report on that last day of the hectic tour in which the tireless DJs had no days off.

DJ ALF says: The final day of the tour started off on a well rested note. With plenty of time to spare before heading to the DMC Japan’s Eastern Regionals, I decided to venture out and about around Shibuya for a good portion of the morning. I wanted to kill some time and walk around because I was anxious to go to the huge roughly six floored Tower Records which opened around 10:30am I first hunted around to grab a bite to eat and ended up finding a Denny’s. Before I entered, I had a feeling that the menu wasn’t going to be the same as what we have here in the States. So I browsed through the menu and happened to find some French toast and sure enough, it was good.

Around 2:45pm we arrived at Game and did a sound check. We all introduced ourselves to new faces that was in attendance. One of the few familiar faces was DJ A-1 who I must point out right now played a nice old school hip-hop set. Earl Jones, who was one of our cameramen on the tour said that, “He almost had me breakdancing in here!” After soundcheck, we immediately took advantage of the time we had before our showcase and went and got something eat. We ended up stopping at the Yakiniku Restaurant to eat, which I ate at a lot while I was stationed in Okinawa. While we were eating Quest shows us some finger lights that he bought from somewhere in Shibuya, and says that he’s going to use them during the showcase. He also mentions that he has another surprise.

Later we show up back at the Game in time for our showcase. When we arrived, the place was packed; which of course is a good sign. Judging by who was on stage at the time, the final heat was going on. After the final heat was over DJ A-1 began his showcase set while we were hastily setting up our equipment on the stage. After DJ A-1 finished his set, I started off playing two songs from 15 minute set and condensed it down to 6 minutes. Mainly two songs that shows the displays the full potential of the Controller 1. Next, Mista-B went on and played an outstanding set. The set he played seemed like he was having a DMC Final flashback and performed it at a high caliber. Then, DnZ came up to bat rocked on one turntable and his MPD, remixing familiar hip-hop songs live. Finally Quest came on and played an amazing set. Remember the finger lights I mentioned about earlier? Well he placed them on his finger during the Electro part of his set and turned on his glow equalizer t-shirt and went to town. However, after roughly halfway through the electro part of his set, he does something with the finger lights as shown in the video at top.