ROX-TV looks back at the NO LIMIT concert at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1998 and the riot that led to a ban on rap shows at the venue.

 

Welcome back to ROX-TV for all our returning guests and I’d like to say what’s up to all the new people tuning in for the very first time. We’ve been working on a lot of new content and have some interesting guests lined up for future article publications, so don’t stop coming back. Tonight we are going to be looking back at some of the concerts that went down in the 90’s and early 2000’s that I was lucky enough to attend personally. These ticket stubs are from my own personal collection and the stories that I tell are all true.

 

I am re-visiting these memories for a few different reasons. First off, it is for the benefit of the younger cats, who may not have been old enough to remember what went down fifteen or twenty years ago but who have interest in the Rap/Music culture. As a younger person, I was always fascinated with concerts I heard about from people that I knew. I could never get enough. I wanted to know everything and enjoyed hearing how “it was for them”. Secondly, I think there is always value in remembering what came before. If we stop caring about things that happened in the past, we run the risk of losing valuable contributions that led us to the “now time”.

 

The fastest way to lose what we have is to ignore and forget. Once we’ve lost the past, it’s easy to end up in a place where we don’t know exactly where we are or where we are going. I don’t want that. These concerts and memories should be celebrated. Thirdly, today’s young people are paying attention. If the “old timers” (not a put down, more like a badge of honor) don’t value the past, it will send a message to the younger crowd. It will say “if they don’t care, why the hell should I? Once that happens, we have lost in more ways than one. Once it becomes ok to forget, there is a good chance that they will do as they’ve seen done, and then we run the risk of setting precedence.

 

If we only care about we are doing as individuals, then the future generations will too, and so begins a slippery slope to shit town. Not today my friends. So kick back, get out that big ass rolling tray and pull out the cooler. We are dipping back in time. I will say up front that age and time, do have a small part in how the memories are told and remembered. I’m just going to tell the readers what I can remember, from my first hand experience and participation. Was there drugs and booze involved? I can not lie. It was not uncommon back then to “load up” before a big show.

 

This could come in many forms, from Marijuana, to Mushrooms, to a little Nitrous Oxide, and a few other things from time to time. Back in the 1990’s, we knew how to get down. I attribute this to hearing stories from the older hippies, rock and rollers, and partiers from the 1960’s and 1970’s. I use to hear stories from family members about the wild times that went down in Detroit and Flint, and in a way, those stories influenced our concert “practices”. Ok, enough of that shit….lets get to it shall we….

 

#1 “No Limit Under The Dome”-NO LIMIT SOLDIERS with special guests (which included legendary SCARFACE) at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac Michigan. Saturday August 29th, 1998 at 7:30pm.

So there I was, an eighteen year old in the Murder Mitten. I was fresh out of high school and enjoying that first summer of freedom. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life really, but had enrolled into Mott Community College in Flint for the fall semester. I was days away from moving on to the next step in my life, whatever that would bring.

At the time, I was working as a concrete laborer, hauling dirty fucking panels around work sites all day, pouring concrete for basements of new houses. The job was tough and often required lots of beer and weed, to decompress after work. The guys I worked with were all pretty hardcore and each day ended with a party. In the morning we would drag our half dead selves back to work, still drunk on occasion, to “build America”.

 

I had been a rap head for years at this point, which was no easy sell with the older guys, who didn’t want to hear that type of “shit”. Mostly it was a battle between Outlaw Country, which I hadn’t developed any taste for at that point, 101.1 WRIF, and the younger guy’s rap picks. The nineties had been good to me as far as the music was concerned. Grunge had been in full affect for a couple of years by then, rap had really exploded around 1993, thanks in part to the California Artists who were dropping classics on almost a daily schedule. The rave scene (at least in Detroit) was going strong, with parties going down rather frequently in odd locations like the Packard Plant. It seemed that there was a little something for everyone.

 

The NO-LIMIT explosion had also been taking place and that was how I wound up in Pontiac on that fateful day, to experience what would later develop into a riot involving the Pontiac Police in full riot gear. MASTER P had been on fire for most of 1997 and 1998, with his music conquering new fans everywhere. For me, I think the biggest reason he was on my radar was the 1997 release of Ghetto D, which contained the track “Make em’ say Ughh”. This album was burning up the charts and sold something like 750,000 copies in the first week. The album would eventually achieve triple platinum status.

 

That is a shit load of music and movement. Some groups don’t sell anywhere near that (or even a fraction) in their entire careers. He was the hottest thing in rap at the time and we had to go see for ourselves, just like the Warriors did when Cyrus called the big gang meeting in the Bronx. My friend’s girlfriend at the time, went up on ticket opening day and purchased five tickets, which at the time was pretty costly. Most shows didn’t dare ask for anything over $25 or $30 dollars, but these bad boys were $46 bucks, before the bullshit scam della scam Ticketmaster “add on fees” which tipped the scales over fifty bucks easy.

 

Nevertheless, we paid the big money and counted down the days till the big show. I will skip a lot bullshit and jump right to the day in question. So there we were, our five member concert party, loading up for the show. My friend’s Andy and Wayne had opted to bring their girlfriends, and then of course me, serving as the “group third wheel times two”. I was pretty pumped up, as I always tended to be, before a big trip to a show. There was excitement and energy in the air, and I was taking it in for all times sake.

 

That…..and some serious weed smoke, which looking back now seems like a terrible idea because I was supposed to be the “designated driver”. Like I said before, it was the 90’s and the designated drivers back then were the people that didn’t get shit faced. A few puffs or drinks wasn’t really any cause for concern, except when it came for my time to shine, I blew it. I’ve had a tendency to do this throughout the years, where things just slipped away a little too far. There was no malice in it, I just liked to have a good time and it took me where it wanted sometimes.

 

I remember hopping in the car, but I was so high, that I had trouble putting the shifter into drive. “It’s messed up” I said, struggling with the shifter. Thankfully, it was not messed up and a new “designated driver” was voted in quickly. I was disappointed not to be driving, but forgot about it rather quickly. When you are young and high, other things soon take over and I spent the drive to Pontiac with my head in the clouds and my arm hanging out the window.

 

When we got to the Silverdome, things were already getting rowdy and the parking lot was full of people, getting “ready” with booze, drugs, and loud noise. I was just coming down out of that intense little high I had going, and suddenly we were walking through the lot. My friend Wayne had made the mistake of wearing a “WU-TANG CLAN” shirt. I remember as we walked through the droves of hardcore NO LIMIT fans, someone shouted at us from their tailgate get down. “This ain’t WU-TANG mutha fucka, this is NO LIMIT” and it brought on several more remarks from various locations.

 

In Wayne’s defense, WU-TANG was just as hot as NO LIMIT was at that point, but they were obviously two different styles. People have to remember that this type of thing was very serious at the time. The whole East Coast vs. West Coast situation had been ongoing for years. It hadn’t been very long since Tupac had been killed (Sept. 1996) and Biggie’s murder had been even more recent than that (March 1997). People liked what they liked and felt strongly about it. I sometimes miss the passion of these years. It was a time when fans would stand in the rain for five hours just to meet their favorite artist. There was no internet or social media, hell there was barely working pay phones. You were alive, and in the moment almost non-stop. There can be a lot of things that get missed, when your head is down. I think social media is ok, but then again, I don’t  enjoy GPS knowing where I am all day either. Whatever.

 

So we made our way into the show. I remember the sun was burning up my eyes, and I was happy to get into the “Dome”. They were checking people for guns, dope, and booze at the front doors. Metal detectors were flying and the garbage cans next to the line were full of bottles and other “off limit” items. The door men probably drank and smoked all the shit later, but that is only a theory.

 

As we got into the Dome, I suddenly remembered that I needed to buy my girlfriend a concert shirt. So I made my way over to the concert shirt line and got out my money. The weed had finally wore off and I was coming back “online”. I asked the man for two shirts, handed him the loot, and then started off on the long walk through the sea of humanity.

 

I was really excited because we had been able to get main floor seats and really good ones at that. We were in “Row 17” and for those that don’t know, that was pretty damn good. I was usually broke and our seating often times reflected that. It wasn’t uncommon to sit in the 600,000th row at a Piston’s basketball game at the Palace, or set up shop in the nose bleed seats for other concerts. Apparently the fifty five bones had been worth it for once.

 

I will never forget the stupid chairs they had on the main floor though and thought it was a bad set up from the get go. There were rows of “fold out” plastic chairs, but the stupid things had been zipped tied together, which seemed like a safety hazard but more on that in a moment. We got settled in and began to wait for the big moment when Master P would take the stage with the NO LIMIT royalty he was travelling with back then. As I turned to my left to take in my surroundings, I instantly saw two guys fumbling with the biggest weed joint I had ever seen, at least  up until that point (today is a different story).

 

Pontiac and Detroit (Flint too) knew how to party at shows and I think the fans in Michigan have always prided themselves on having a good time. Whenever I would attend shows, the performers often times applauded the crowds because “Detroit” knew how to get down, whether we were actually in Clarkston at Pine Knob, The Palace of Auburn Hills, or Pontiac. For some reason every place was “Detroit” and the fans never seemed to mind, but I thought it was a little funny. Smiling on the inside, like a Karate Man (Thank you Eddie Murphy).

 

The lights dimmed, and suddenly there was movement on the stage. This is where things start to get a little hazy as far as the performers because there was other things happening all around. As soon as the show started, there seemed to be trouble in about the fifth row, just a short distance away from my cozy spot at seventeen. A fight broke out and there was the usual chaotic movement, and re-direction of attention. I’m not sure, but after a few minutes, that seemed to evaporate. My next memory is SCARFACE (the Geto Boys legend) on stage doing some songs. I was really into the song “Smile” which featured Tupac and Johnny P, and I’m pretty sure he performed that during his brief appearance on stage. It was his most commercially successful single to date, charting at 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.

 

The crowd loved SCARFACE or at least I thought they did. But at some point, the focus slowly shifted back to that area of fifth and sixth row. There was more trouble brewing. To make matters worse, people were standing on the cheap plastic rip off chairs, and the “rows” were no longer in a straight line. People were climbing over them to get better seats and avoid ushers, although after a certain point I don’t remember them either. The was thousands of people at the show and the energy was ticking upwards all the time.

 

It was the first time I started to get “that feeling”. Not really good or bad, just….a feeling that something big was coming. Time started to do weird things for me and then SCARFACE was gone, and the moment everyone had been waiting for was just around the corner. The lights flickered off and on, or at least that’s what my memory is telling me. And then the music started. The roar of the crowd was deafening and the energy was hitting Chernobyl red lines all around me. I was excited, stoned, and had my hands up. The fans were in pure ecstasy. But then…some poorly timed words changed everything.

 

Music crowds in Michigan are very serious and again, pride themselves on being Bout It. As NO LIMIT took the stage, there were suddenly ten or twelve rappers on stage and they were addressing the insane crowd of fans screaming back at them (not really screaming, that’s the type of shit girls did for the Beatles. This was a crowd full of G’s from all over the State, sending their support verbally).

 

“Is Detroit Bout It Bout It ya’ll? One of the guys onstage asked the crowd. The crowd responded wildly that they were. “Let’s see you get Bout It Bout” and was no doubt referring to the famous NO LIMIT song. The only problem was that the hardcore Michigan cats were Bout It Bout It and they started getting wild. Fights broke out immediately and people started tearing off the zip ties that held the chairs together. Within seconds there were people getting their asses kicked for unknown trouble around the fifth row, then chairs went flying in all directions. Within seconds, the show had stopped, the performers were gone, and shit was breaking out everywhere.

There was a stampede of people at some point, and I was nearly crushed to death by the wall of humanity scrambling to get away from whatever was transpiring in those first few rows. Because most of the chairs were still linked together, when one row fell, they all did and people were not digging that shit. Once I reached the far wall to the east of the the stage (whatever side I was on was to the left of the stage, if a person was on it, looking out at the crowd) I was shocked to see that the Pontiac Police were marching into the building, with deep numbers and in full riot gear.

 

“Shit, they’re gonna beat our ass” I remember saying as they slowly advanced down on the people and began shifting the crowd towards the exits. It was all happening in slow motion and I was almost spellbound, like I was watching a movie or something. The only problem was that I was in the movie and had a front row seat. The fights and trouble, pushed out the doors by the police, had now over taken the parking lot. Breaking glass and bottles were flying everywhere and it was a sight to see.

 

The last thing I remember is the Pontiac riot police shoving billy clubs in our backs and pushing us out the door. The show had lasted about twelve minutes. Dodging racing cars, fights, and flying bottles, we got back to the ride and began the hour ride back to the 810. I was riding high from the adrenaline and was thankful that I had managed to hold onto the concert shirts. I got home to relive the moment with my girlfriend and gave her the shirt. We made sweet sweet love, thank you concert shirt….and that was that. The following day, the news of the riot had travelled around the country.

 

Local politicians called for a ban on all rap/hip hop shows at the Pontiac Silverdome. It turned into a big deal and there was a case to be made that rap fans first amendment rights to FREE SPEECH was being trampled on (right to assemble as well). The people in power banned the shows citing “violence” as the reason. News outlets covered the event and even MTV got involved with the case. It was a ridiculous outcome and probably had more to do with lack of proper venue security and poor set up of the seating. Nevertheless, the Pontiac Police were ready for action and wasted no time getting in there.

 

In the end, I was hoping for a refund but Ticketmaster refused unless you gave up your ticket stub, proving that you had purchased the ticket. I was not about to do that. The show was famous, even though it never really happened, and I wanted proof I was there. I ate the fifty dollars, and held onto the ticket that is pictured above. The shirt is still in my dresser to this day.

 

On a side note, I wore that damn shirt proudly for months until one day I noticed a funny thing. As I was looking in the mirror, I noticed that “Soldier” didn’t exactly look right. I did a little homework and realized that whoever had made the damn shirt had spelled the shit wrong. I had been walking around for months with a shirt that said “NO LIMIT SOILDER” and the it needed to be “NO LIMIT SOLDIER”. I was so pissed and then a wave a laughter hit me. Who gave a fuck? I had a good time, no one had ever mentioned it to me, and it was just enough interesting avenue of the story. Eventually Pontiac Silvedome was imploded, or at least that’s what I thought I read somewhere. The people stopped coming and the place died on the vine. But I never forgot that wild day in August of 1998. Good times.

 

That about does it for the NO LIMIT memory. Thanks for joining us at ROX-TV as we looked back on another gem. Keep tuning in to this rotating series for more shows and first hand accounts from people that were there….ok its just me, but its still cool. We have a great line up planned with Insane Clown Posse, Beastie Boys, Janes Addiction, ESHAM, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Ice Cube, Lou Reed, Cypress Hill, Busta Rhymes, Kid Rock, and many, many more. I was a busy bee back then and went to as many concerts as possible.

 

Signing off,

 

Mike Shepard

ROX-TV Head Writer

shepard2909@hotmail.com

kidvicious810 on Instagram

 

 

 

Note from the author: It’s never a good idea to ban free speech, even if you don’t agree with what is being said, especially in these trying times. The people in power today, can always be replaced by others who might not share someone’s particular views, later down the road. I know banning a rap concert would be unheard of today, but they did shit like this twenty three years ago. If we ban things we don’t like or agree with today, we are no better than those that did it in the past. If we ban things today, we set a precedent for history, which often times has a tendency to repeat itself. The first amendment right to free speech is important. If we strip it away, little by little, there is a good chance we will feel negative affects at some point down the line. I believe it is the old “unintended consequences”.