Recap: Taste of Troost, July 4

This past July 4 in Kansas City, one of the busiest street corners in Kansas City was 76th and Troost — the parking lot of 7th Heaven — where from early afternoon to about 8 o’clock, rappers, bands and herds of neighborhood people held court at the second annual Taste of Troost festival.

The fest had been about seven or eight weeks in the making. Three whiteboys — Adam (son of 7th Heaven owner Jan) Fichman, Kevin Sweeney and Rob Scott of Lifted Logic — along with their community associates had rounded up local restaurants to sell food and local performers to come perform on the grounds around the record store/East-side institution. The days preceding the party, they built a stage adjacent to the old Lifted Logic office, with a green room and closed-circuit feed from the stage inside. In the hours before daybreak on Saturday, however, rain had caused the roof over the stage to collapse. The guys decided to rebuild the roof, setting the proceedings back a couple of hours, and by the time I arrived around 1:30 p.m., the proposed schedule seemed to have experienced some switchups.

G’s Jamaican Cuisine, Papa Lew’s soul food, Little D’s Fried Chicken and Fish and others were supplying eats; DJ Fresh on behalf of Hot 103 was on the roof of the building just north of the store, supplying beats. The first act that I saw (and probably the first act of the day, period, though I’m not 100% sure) was Ike Berg, a local rapper who came on stage with an entourage including middle-school-aged girls, who shook and shimmied gleefully like members of a drill team. Upping the ante on kid involvement was the next act, BallStar, who brought his own nine-year-old son on stage to rap a number whose chorus went “I did it how I’m ‘posed ta.” It was pretty adorable. And also fierce. If I were in fourth grade, I’d want that kid to be on my side.