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— by Shaheem Reid
Will somebody please scream, pass out from excitement or even just ask for an autograph? The silence doesn't feel right. The chief disrupter of tranquility in Disturbing Tha Peace is in town, and everybody is acting like it's just a normal day.
Ludacris' tour bus is parked in the Prime Suites hotel lot in Secaucus, New Jersey, scheduled for a prompt 1 p.m. departure. (If you're late, you just might get left behind. Luda and company pride themselves on being on time.) Ludacris is inside giving an interview and cannot be seen through the windows, though a minivan wrapped with his picture is in plain view. But there's no fan hysteria. Which is cool with Cris — he needs the rest. As the headliner on the Chicken-N-Beer tour, Luda gets all the attention he needs.
"The cities we've been through, we've really been giving the people their money's worth," Luda gloats seconds after his bus pulls out en route to Worcester, Massachusetts, for a performance date. "It's been historic to have David Banner, Knoc-Turn'Al, to have Chingy, to have myself. We all support one another. I think every city we've gone to, we've pretty much got the same reaction. It's just been off the hook."
And tonight will be no different. Chingy will get mobbed by girls, and Ludacris, forget about it. The corn-rowed master of metaphor will be squeezed, groped, screamed at, almost tackled and will come close to drowning in the tears of doting fans. But right now, as his bus is stopped at a tollbooth at the George Washington Bridge, the former Atlanta radio jock is enjoying the calm.
The charismatic mouth of the South has extended his arms and is offering up some Southern hospitality as he shows off his tour bus, or as he calls it, "my pride and joy."
"You can take a sh-- on this bus," Ludacris says proudly, standing in his bedroom located in the rear of the bus. "One of the rules when you on tour is most of the buses have commodes where you can't take a sh--. On this particular bus you can. That's why I said I don't need to go nowhere."
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The Chicken-N-Beer Fam
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Name: Chingy
From: St. Louis
Album: Jackpot
Fun fact: Just like Ludacris, Chingy loves chicken and beer, but will only eat the "drumett" chicken wings
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Name: David Banner
From: Jackson, Mississippi
Album: MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water
Fun fact: Banner, who is also a producer, concocted the beat for T.I.'s current hit single "Rubber Band Man" over five years ago
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Name: Shawnna
From: Chicago
Album: Worth the Weight (release date TBD)
Fun fact: Shawnna's dad, Buddy Guy, won a Grammy this year for Best Traditional Blues Album
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Name: Knoc-Turn'Al
From: Los Angeles
Album: The Way I Am (due March 23)
Fun fact: Knoc and Snoop Dogg are first cousins
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Name: Disturbing Tha Peace
From: All over the place
Album: Golden Grain
Fun fact: The whole crew is working on a follow-up album to Golden Grain
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No wonder Ludacris often opts out of staying in a hotel. Besides the luxury of being able to have his way with the toilet, Luda has a shower and bathroom sink, two refrigerators, a handpicked queen-size mattress, TVs with satellite-powered cable, DVDs like "Road to Perdition," CDs, including Twista's Kamikaze, and multiple stereos.
The leader of Disturbing Tha Peace has some rules that need to be followed while traveling from state to state. Everyone cleans up after themselves, and a major no-no is over-packing. Luda sees no need to bring a bunch of clothes from home because he goes shopping in almost every city he hits.
"Long as you got clean socks and clean drawers, you can bring four or five tour outfits [to perform in]," he says. "You wear each one of them every weekday. You switch them up, get 'em clean and wear them again. Ain't nobody gonna notice that sh--. Then you wear four or five outfits during the day. I'm one of those people that just likes to be comfortable. Long as I got some jeans and basketball shorts to be comfortable in, I'm always gonna be happy. It don't take a lot to make me happy. I'm not spoiled like that."
Unlike his previous tours, where he had to share a bus with the rest of Disturbing Tha Peace, Luda has considerably more space to himself. For the Chicken-N-Beer outing he rolls with his bodyguard Ronald Ross, his road manager, Branden Booker, DTP Vice President Sean Taylor, and Ahmed Obafemi, who is the father of Luda's manager and business partner, Chaka Zulu.
You would think that an artist with songs in his catalog like "P-Poppin' " and "Ho" would bask in buckwild frolicking on his bus. Maybe half a dozen groupies here, some of that sticky icky that he raps about being passed over there. But there's none of that. When he's not onstage, Cris is focused on business. Besides staying on top as a rapper, he constantly reads over scripts sent by the William Morris Agency, and makes sure his DTP label's upcoming R&B and rock acts pop like his hip-hop artists.
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Photo: MTV News
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