The Brisbane turntablists and hip hop community are organizing a fundraiser for The Masta (The Master / Da Masta / Jason Belzer) (twitter tag #Funds4DaMasta) who is also suffering from cancer. Initially they are asking for people to donate items for the eBay auctions - details below.
*** Update 19-20/12/2011 - THE AUCTION IS NOW LIVE @ http://search.ebay.com.au/?sass=aliak77&ht=-1 ***
the auction has started! all the profits will be sent to The Masta to help ease his battle with cancer - already an amazing response - from such high quality & often rare donations, to people spreading the word, and bidding on items. still a few items to put up, but the majority are there. thanks so much to everyone involved - it feels like the whole Australian hip hop community has come together to help with this. (I will add more to the tumblr site over next few days) auctions run for another 9-10days - there's a range of items (& some aren't hip hop, if that's not your thing). I think there's something for everyone. single items & packs - if you can't afford one item, maybe consider doing a 'joint bid' with another/few people. &/or help spread the word. all help is greatly appreciated!! http://search.ebay.com.au/?sass=aliak77&ht=-1 is the direct ebay link
http://funds4damasta.tumblr.com
I remember seeing The Master DJ at gigs and in competitions (eg DMC & ITF) in Brisbane in the 1990s and early 2000s. He always had the flair to entertain the audience with crowd pleasing moves. At the time there was a fair bit of rivalry between some of the turntablists - there were battles between DJ Angus / Bribe and The Master. Angus was a friend of mine so I always went for him of course, but I thought The Master was a good turntablist too - his skills often had the crowds cheering. I remember seeing them battle it out on the decks at Rics in the Valley and at the bar in Paddington (which I've just forgotten the name of, will update when I remember).
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I have a copy of his "From Dole Cheques to Rolex" album also, which I'd discovered a couple of years after its release (as I'd left Brisbane officially in mid 2001, though traveled back there often throughout 2001 on weekend trips) - it's a great cd, once again, very entertaining. He's also one of the fastest Australian rappers that I've heard. His raps on this album are very funny, but in the same way a little sad in that there always seems to have been something going wrong in his life or a quirky situation in his lyrics. It's good he handled it with humour though. He used to have really long hair back then - a Samson-like character. Or an Australian version of a Philip K Dick book character, the Aussie battler.
Hunter used to speak about him very fondly on twitter - we had a few chats about his CD and DJing and Hunter would sing his praises. I found some of his tweets from 6th & 7th April 2011 - this was one occasion - I'd sent Jason a message on facebook to see if he'd like to do a video for turntabletag and had mentioned it to Hunter - he told some stories and talked about some music they were working on together. I know he wanted to help the Masta also, and mentioned that he spoke to him on the phone often. The Master lives in Melbourne now - MC Reason has posted on twitter too that he's gone over to Jason's place to help support him, and I've heard Bigfoot has been a great support also. It's just a heartbreaking situation, and we've already lost too many good people with Hunter's passing.
