There was a fun bustling energy at the pre show to the S.I.N. (Social Influencer Night) Awards. I started this blog sitting in the auditorium at Cegep Marie-Victorin waiting for the show festivities to get underway. The room was filling up and there was an impressive number of people here.
The atmosphere was exciting. I think for a lot of us this is new territory, maybe I'm projecting. There were people from all over the entertainment sphere in attendance. There wasn't a clear dress code but people are definitely wearing fits they have been waiting to wear.
I bought my ticket so I could come and write about this event. For those folks salty they were excluded, the best way to gain social influence is to let folk know you want to be included in the next event. I’m available as a blogger, event host, stage manager, and performer. We can do live interviews and a bunch more stuff. If you want to support the cause, hit up the Patreon. Show me you want more of this content in a way that counts ;).
My commercial break is done, let’s get on to the event review.
Why go to an award show?
Great question! I don't follow the majour award shows. Over time you realise how behind the scenes it all is. The political landscape of the entertainment world leads to nepotistic dynamics that arguably shouldn't be supported. However those dynamics are how the world works and until new systems replace them you are part of these systems whether or not you like it.
An award show is the definition of entertainer vanity. I am an entertainer and this is our industry. No matter how the nominees and winners are selected, these are our peers.
I don't have a horse in the race. I don't even know most of the people nominated. I’m focusing on how it’s a problem that I didn’t know who Landy Garcia was. He has real life fans and everything. I went to expand my network.
I've spent a long time avoiding the bigger scene that takes place in Quebec. I can blame the language divide, lack of institution or whatever I want. I see those complaints all the time. This was an effort to fix the lack of industry, at a bigger scale than 95% of the people complaining could pull off. The only way we can get past the “no industry” hurdle is to participate in things that are clear efforts to build industry.
At first I was salty that I was overlooked for the SIN awards. Then I remembered I don't have social influence like that, and to get it, I should do more social things.
The pre-show black carpet experience
I found parking because I'm a driving dude now. I got there just after the doors opened. There were a good amount of people already there.
Jay Seven and his squad were there. Goofy and his people were there. A lot of the VIP folk were there. Unlike a lot of events, there was a reward for respecting the times and coming earlier. The real value in these nights is getting face time with the people who are doing things in the city.
They had converted the hall in front of the auditorium into a cocktail hour styled area.
They had a rig set up to take 360 videos. There were several vendors around and there was even a bar set up (at the school). The drink line did get a little ludicrous at times, but that's because there were a couple of hundred people there.
Most of the VIP crowd was "on time". There were beautiful people dressed in beautiful clothes. It really felt a bit like what you picture an LA influencer party to be. When all the VIPs disappeared to go get special treatment elsewhere, I noticed how few of us were the regulars left in the crowd.
I was out of my element but glad to be there. I know they will remember the pickle the more they see it and socialising will get easier for me. I see the look on my face in pics, I’m working on not looking lost.
The 2023 S.I.N. Awards begin
There were a couple of logistical snafus getting people into the theatre. You overhear a bunch when you listen to venue employees, but by about 7:45-8:00 the show was underway. The advertised start time of the show was 7:00 PM. I’ll leave it at, not bad at all.
I get the feeling schools care more about punctuality than bars. DJ Iwonder held us down with the music until all of a sudden a dance routine started. It was a mighty fun dance routine.
I want to see more dance crews at events. They add a large number of people to the crowd and they are fun to watch. They also let DJs play songs regular folk already know mid event..
I say that because then a few performers came up. Each of them had 5-10 mins max. It was pretty back to back. I don't really know who the main hosts were but the music was tight. Just not stuff I heard before. Getting a little “I just wanna Rock” in the middle is like a pallet cleanser.
I can't emphasise enough how good the performers were. They came with videos to play as they performed. They either had dancers or their own choreography. The music sounded professional and pop. All the music that got performed had a danceability to it. Even Fauxcuss, who came bar heavy, but with swagger.
All that to say I see how good they are and why they got picked to perform.
A bunch of people won awards
I missed the first few awards that were given out. I happened to pop outside for 10 mins. SansPressions was floating around and chopping it up with him was fun.
Then while outside, someone said they won some online award or something. I realised I was missing the festivities. I went back inside and there were more musical performances happening.
That made sense, award shows are just concerts with awards being given out in between performances. During the award presentation ceremony, someone would introduce an announcer. Then the announcer would list the nominees and the category. Then the winner would be announced.
There were no visuals for the nominees like you would expect. This was the first version of this award show. I don’t want to nitpick the stuff that they are clearly aware they can do better. However I could not visualise most of the nominees and it broke my immersion. If anyone needs help with managing the laptop for the live show, holla, I do it on Twitch all the time.
The winners went up and made speeches. Shoutout Feezy for winning with Da Main Source. It was pretty much everything I thought it would be. I thought it was cool how big some of the posses for certain people were. It shows a level of solidarity people pretend don’t exist in our scene. It gave me goals to work towards.
There was a really cool fashion show
My favourite part of the night was the fashion show. This was my first fashion show in as long as I can remember, it may be my first one ever.
The way I understand it, each designer presented their outfits across the available models. Each presenting their flair. I really liked the sparkly dudes clothing designer. Some of these models have such amazing stage presence. I was really watching how they move, how they use their eyes and the control they exercise in their form. The performance side of modelling has so much going that is so easy to miss.
At one point, it felt like the lighting wasn’t where it was supposed to be, but the models with sheer discipline followed stage commands to the letter. I was mesmerised by their performances.
The clothing was cool. I’m slowly learning more about fashion and style so for the first time ever I was actually appreciating the art in the styles presented to me. I lack an education to produce the language required to give any of it justice, but it was a fun 30 minutes or so.
Also, by having a fashion show, you can easily add 30 people to your crowd. Maybe we need to do more fashion shows in the lower end of our little scene. Get like 15 models in the room showcasing custom clothing, in a room full of people like me who’d pay for custom pickle clothes.
The Fake Drake conversation
I have been writing this blog over the last couple of days and by now the word is out that Fake Drake was at the show. I saw all kinds of opinions on that, and it solidified my choice of thumbnail image.
I met Izzy Famous (formerly Izzy Drake) outside the venue before the show started. I was still doing my grown up broccoli thing outside and the Izzy Famous crew was just chilling. While in retrospect I had heard of the man, at that moment I had no idea who he was.
What I can say is he was really chill and we had a really good conversation. His music definitely reshaped the mood of the evening, but the people who liked it, liked it a lot. The man knows how to perform.
Some people are mad that “Fake Drake” performed at a Montreal social influence night. While I can understand how certain folk who literally helped launch a TV network would be irked they weren’t honoured, I can’t see why Fake Drake should be excluded.
This night was about social media influencer stuff. Now in my verbose opinion we should be including people who live in other cities. Fake Drake and his peeps are part of the Ottawa world. Is a Montreal award show’s performances really limited to the people who live here?
Aneesa Badshaw was a presenter and she came in from Toronto. Should the entire roster be exclusively Montreal? That doesn’t feel very awardshowey. To have an ecosystem and industry you need to include people who do things in the ecosystem and the industry elsewhere. I personally would include people from out of town, but I didn’t throw this award show.
Make your own award show
I mean that literally to everyone who had a problem with the SIN Awards. If this wasn’t to your liking, go do it better. This was clearly a minimum viable product and everything starts somewhere.
I think we need to look at the etymology of the theme of the night too. It was a social influence night. With that in mind, wouldn’t the guy Drake sued into changing his name have some clout? He does have 183K followers. He can sell tickets to events. He has established a degree of social influence as a character in the Canadian lexicon of entertainment.
There is a lot of chatter about who should have been included in the award show. A lot of people decided this should be decided via a lens of Hip Hop cultural impact. Upon which perhaps Monk.E should have been nominated for something. This was not a “Hip Hop” show (no matter if that was in the branding). This was akin to an LA pretty person influencer party. This was an award show for the people who have obtained fans via the social sphere.
The smallest amount of following in the male Hip Hop artist was like 4500 followers. The people who got picked are people who have figured out the grant systems and the industry and are playing the game in a marketable way. This was the pop awards. So I encourage other people to make their own awards show. I want to be nominated for best even coverage blog or something. Or the “Most songs about pickles” category. Y’all don’t want me to make an award show. It would be the most “lampoon the industry” satire piece I ever did in art. I will say I get why Kevin Calixte feels a way. He actually does have social influence online and arguably should have been included in some way.
I love how much the scene is growing
I think a lot of people being sour about this event is great. This thing got so many eyes on it. High-key, so many people are going to try and get nominated next year after poo pooing on it today. Shoutout Jay Mombo for making this happen. There was a lot that could be criticised, but I don’t want to be that guy at this moment. This event was fun. I enjoyed my time and feel my money spent on tickets was well used for the value I extracted.
Instead I offer my help as a corporate project manager with a lot of experience dealing with website flows. I know how to manage multiple sales funnels and ensure universal messaging across the board in a way that will instil trust in the consumer. I got paid to do things of this nature by a software company for a long time.
I certainly hope more people throw more award shows. I will come to all of them and ignore who won and lost and talk about all the stuff I cared about.
But this event was for the people who have that dress hanging in the closet for 3 years and you’ve been waiting for that perfect thing to go to. This was that thing. Even the guys put effort into not looking like bums.
I wish more of the people I see regularly at events were there. It was pleasant running into King K LV and Honey Benjamin. Next time I hope to see more of you there.
Don’t sleep on those 75$ ticket price events. Especially the people on the come up.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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