For a few tracks the “kosher salami” donned a Seahawks hat that was thrown on stage near the end of the show.The first thing I noticed after walking into The Showbox on Sunday night was a girl proudly waving a string of beads over her head — anal beads. No lie.True to form, Mickey Avalon made out with the girls in the front row, spit water into the crowd and was accompanied by two scantily-clad dancers who may or may not have been actual prostitutes. The music itself was unreal and unruly, but an extremely sold-out and intoxicated Showbox seemed to be more concerned with the glam-rapper’s bizarre presence. They were thoroughly entertained.He nearly covered the entirety of self-titled debut LP, and even played some new songs: “Oh Baby,” “On The Ave,” and one possibly titled “Fuckin’ ‘Em All.” They were pure gold, as one could only expect from the scrawny tattooed rapper who almost wasn’t. But despite the wild performance, something entirely else was on my mind. While interviewing Mickey in the tour bus, I noticed a tattoo on his left forearm: “A-13344.” It was his grandfather’s designated number in the Holocaust labor camps, part of the vow “to never forget.” After reading the incredible LA Weekly profile, I got to know his past: heroin addiction, male prostitution and, at one time, Orthodox Judaism. Much of his past can be gleaned from the music — in reality, it became the fodder for his obscenely raw lyrics — but there’s a lot more to him than being “So Rich, So Pretty.”Avalon raps “Roll The Dice” during his Sunday night show, a track off his self-titled debut album.On his fans:“A lot of the people I was kind of satirizing, including myself, like I definitely didn’t think those people would become my fans. And like, almost some of them, certain songs kind of became their anthem.”On his explosion in a designer-label crowd:“If I could really get in with [the fashion crowd], like in fuckin’ France or Italy or something, wherever they do it, that would be kind of cool. Like it’s one of the only places I guess where you can just be a fuck up and just be somebody’s muse.”On his success and his daughter:“It’s one of those things where… like if you’re poor and you get a little bit of money, it’s definitely a lot better than being poor. I have a daughter, and I kind of try to put most of my focus on her… but I mean until my daugther’s 18 and out of the house and hasn’t gone crazy, I can’t really say I’ve pulled it off because I still don’t know what the damage or the repercussion is going to be from all this. But she’s a good kid — like to her there’s things that are appropriate and inappropriate and what I do is inappropriate for people her age.”You can listen to the full interview here.Check out a new track titled “I Luv U Mickey” off the new free Dyslexic Speedreaders Mixtape.
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