The restaurant/bar/video gamery/recording studio/money pit brought luminaries like Fat Joe and Fabolous to walk the red carpet at the opening of the restaurant chain's second location last week. It must have been scheduled to coincide with an unprecedented lull in hip-hop song collaboration to attract those also rans.
Hey, wait a minute – second location? There's that decrepit spot in St. Pete that bore the HipHopSodaShop sign for the past few years, never open and now for lease. And yeah, there's also that desperate, empty building near USF that feels like some unpopular teenage fanboy is holding a perpetual wake for Biggie in a defunct Bennigans, complete with the Xbox from his basement. But that can't be the flagship, can it?
I guess it sort of embodies "a business with a consciousness that embraces the totality of today's young people.'' Huh.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2008.