By Joshua Errett

Why is it so few Getting Up Festival write-ups avoid using the word “bling”? It’s neither funny nor cute, and distracts attention from a rare Toronto appearance of Nas (a man who predates the word by over ten years). This weekend’s Getting Up Festival was unquestionably Toronto’s biggest-ever hip hop and hip hop culture showcase, and perhaps need more recognition for that. All references to “bling” aside, clothing designer Mark Ecko put his money where his musical tastes are to bring the best of the mainstream rap to the city for a trial-run of the gigantic festival at the Dock’s. Fortuitously, the originally overpriced $70 tickets were slashed in half to provide the Torontoist Club a chance to get out to Getting Up. Here’s what we saw:

Ciara, looking very Rythm Nation-era Janet Jackson, shook IT up and poured water all over herself.

The Mighty Mos Def.

Graffiti art, some taking all day.

Shoes – not for sale though.

Local rapper and former telemarketer Bishop curated a freestyle competition in the Players Club. Ultra-lame and very homophobic. Does it surprise anyone that the most violent, vulgar, misogynist raps came from our local scene? In their weak defense, they were battling…and for a cool $1000 at that.

Where Torontoist hung out for most of the day.

Torontoist could not actually be a Video Vixen, we did encourage our lady friends to sign up.

Y’all know it’s Nas, yo.
Also of note: Busta Rhymes, Overweight Joe, Rochester AKA Juice and Keisha Chante also played on this day. And so did “Drop It Like It’s Hot” – a total of 7 times…(we left early too).