Rap is a world so remote to this writer’s that when we were informed that Gloc 9 was to be the guest in Davao’s “Larolympics,” we had to double check who or what it was.
It turned out, everyone in Anak TV, myself excluded, had heard of him. His repute as a machine-gun mouth was rather widespread, we discovered, and his association with the late master rapper Francis M actually made him even more familiar to many. He was not a talent in Kiko’s stable, just a friend, he explains, who inspired him.
It was also a delightful astonishment when the predominantly teeny bopper crowd in Davao welcomed Gloc 9 with shrieks and fanatic screams of adulation. Here was a young man in very simple garb who hardly stood out in a crowd. When his music played and he took to the mic, he morphed into a rap star that literally swept the listeners off their feet. The scouting contingent had to cordon off the performance area lest overzealous fans break in and do something overboard.
Crowd reaction approached pandemonium.
For a while, we thought that everything else that should have mattered that afternoon became inconsequential: the Larolympics finals, the awarding ceremonies, even the VIPs onstage. What was already a musty and humid gym deteriorated into a sweltering sauna after Gloc 9’s songs, no thanks to the shrill shrieks and roaring thunder of applause.
