It’s a gray Sunday evening, 50-something degrees and drizzling when The Beetnix step onto the outdoor stage at IX Art Park. It’s been raining all day, but a crowd of more than 100 has gathered on the graffiti-painted concrete ground in front of the stage. Many of them hold their phones and tablets in the air, precipitation be damned, ready to capture Charlottesville’s most legendary hip-hop duo on video.
“Come closer,” Damani “Glitch One” Harrison says to the crowd as he picks up a mic. With his arms stretched out wide, Louis “Waterloo” Hampton beckons for everyone to move in closer.
For Harrison, 39, hip-hop has been part of his life since he was a kid. A military brat who grew up in Germany and Philadelphia, he remembers exactly where he was when the music caught him.