The Time I Tried to Kick E-40 Out of His Dressing Room

If you would have asked me to imagine my future about 10 years ago, I would have never guessed that one day I’d be responsible for fulfilling hospitality riders for a music festival…or that I would love it…or that in the process, I’d accidentally try and kick one of the artists out of their dressing room.

For the A3C Festival this year, in addition to my role as the food and beverage manager for the festival, I was also tasked with overseeing hospitality for the artists. I fulfilled every quirky and whimsical thing (white socks?) and on show days I traveled to each venue to make sure that everything was running smoothly.

During the E-40 and Friends show, I found myself backstage at Masquerade. The artist’s manager asked for some assistance in having his dressing room cleared of all the groupies that decided they wanted to take up space and time. As I politely went from person to person and asked them to leave (as you can imagine, this was not extremely effective), my hand landed on the shoulder of a firm man. Head down, I tried to gently guide him out of the room with my palm. After a few nudges, I realized he refused to budge. As I looked up, I realized that the person that I was trying to escort out was E-40, temporary occupant of the dressing room we were standing in. And here I was trying to tell him when to go (I really hope you got that).

Hmm, embarrassing.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

I wondered how to get myself out of this.

Finally, I awkwardly told him that he could stay.

He laughed.

I tittered, took a breath, and left.

The groupies stayed.