Don't Try To Fuck Kitty Pryde's Stuffed Pony

Growing up in the Toronto's west-end suburbs of Etobicoke sucks, as the only interesting thing to ever happen in that area involved our mayor using a home there to smoke crack. Recently, this changed for a night when Kitty (formerly known as Kitty Pryde) was set to play a show at possibly the most westerly venue in the entire city, The Rockpile. The location of the show was a hot topic on social media for the weeks leading up to the show, with countless fans complaining about how it was going to be in the middle of nowhere (which was basically true) and how the opening acts were a long list of little known Toronto hip-hop artists and one punk band. The general consensus was that it was going to be a weird, albeit awesome, show.

Before it started, I was able to meet up with Kitty and chat with her about the show and how she was enjoying her second visit to Canada. Flying in the morning after her show in Winnipeg, Kitty was disappointed that she hadn't seen as much of Toronto as she would have liked. Since it was her first time in Toronto, and her second time in the country, Kitty didn't understand all the outrage over the location of the show “I'll play shows wherever I'm invited. It's not like I'm gonna say no because of where the venue is.”

After we got the basic niceties about her experiences in Canada down, like how Canadians all ridiculously nice, our perceptions of Drake and Justin Bieber, and how she's never seen a single episode of Degrassi, Kitty wanted to head outside for a smoke. A lot of the Kitty's appeal lies in the fact that she seems so incredibly relatable, especially to weird kids from middle-of-nowhere suburbs. While we chatted on the patio, several stunned fans were able to work up the courage and come up to talk to Kitty and ask for pictures with her. You could see the relief in each of the girls faces as Kitty gladly made small talk about topics such as Toronto winters and boyfriends.

Unfortunately, the excitement that Kitty's fans had didn't seem to be matched by some of the opening acts. I has asked one of the local rappers if he was excited to open for Kitty and preform for her fans, but he seemed disinterested and even faked not recognizing her just a few feet away from them, despite Kitty's bluish-blonde hair standing out amongst the crowd. When he and another performer did eventually talk to her, the conversation mostly revolved around them bragging to Kitty about how they were going to shoot a video of their set, and implied that it would be cool if Kitty was in the crowd for some of the shots.

Back inside the green room, we talked about the openers and the less positive side of fame, “I kind of get why some guys wouldn't be pumped to be opening for me, especially since I didn't take this completely seriously for so long.” When I asked if she thinks that some of the hate she gets stems from how different her style is from other female rappers, and rappers in general, replied “it's part of why I lied about my age for so long, it definitely frustrated a lot of guys that they didn't know what age I was, or if I was 'legal yet'. I don't want to be sexualized, and since I do look young I was able to hold off on the weird attention you get once someone knows your 18. But I think the thing that actually pisses people off is that I call people out on shit that they say or do. A lot of people were pissed when I wrote about the Danny thing. The next show we played the crowd chanted 'suck Danny's dick' at me which was fucked up.” Kitty sat back in her chair and sighed, “What's weird is that I still get harassment despite me consciously trying to prevent that sort of attention, like Iggy Azalea has to wear multiple pairs of underwear cause people try to finger her. People think that just because someone is rapping about sex, or in my case rapping with someone who raps about sex, they're inviting complete strangers to do whatever and say whatever they want.”

“Another issue is that I'm sorta in the middle of the fame spectrum.” she said, “I run everything on my own, so I see everything that more famous musicians don't necessarily see because someone else is running their Twitter for them. It's tiring, I don't know how much longer I can do it, reading that shit.” From the green room, we began to hear that the first of the opening acts was beginning to play, so we both headed out to explore. The crowd was decent in size along the front of the stage, and unsurprisingly for a Toronto show, there were more people sitting down or standing around the bar. Kitty got a drink and was chatting with fans as they came up to her, and if it wasn't for the fact that I knew she had never been to Etobicoke, let alone Toronto before, I would have assumed she was friends with all of them. The stage was a good size, and Kitty had a comfy chair placed on it with one of her stuffed animal—a pony.

I spotted some of the guys from the punk band, Wastoids, that were going to be playing later. As I took the short second walk over to them, the rappers that were on the stage used the words “suck my dick” approximately five times, then finished their set with “let's hear it for skull fucking!” to which about three people cheered. “I'm really confused why we're here,” said Julian the lead singer of Wastoids. I had asked Kitty earlier if she thought the line up was weird. “I will play with whoever. I even play with emo bands. Besides, I like punk, Daytona is nothing but punk bands. This is normal for me.”

The next act to open was a lone rapper who repeated the previous call to celebrate skull fucking. Someone in the crowd must have said something, as the rapper then began to threaten the faceless voice in the crowd, saying “yeah talk shit, after the show you're gonna get fucked up!” It was clear that he was being aggressively ironic, but the crowd wasn't having it, and several people actually went up to Kitty to ask if she was OK with the “skull fucking” guys opening for her.

Not to be outdone, when Wastoids took the stage one of them yelled out “I'm gonna fuck this pony!” pointing at Kitty's stuffed DJ Pon-3. Dozens of girls around the venue watched with their mouths agape with offence as Kitty got up on stage, grabbed the pony, and clutched it close as she jumped off. As she would later say during her set, “Don't you DARE fuck my pony.”

Due to the number of openers, Kitty's set started later than was originally promised. Because of this, any haters who were at the show had clearly left in fear of wasting more time than they had originally anticipated, and the only people still by the bar were a pair of tired looking dads who were chaperoning a group of teens. Taking the stage alone initially (Kitty was doing this Canada mini-tour by herself) she was able to convince the venue security that it was OK to have fans dancing on the stage. After Kitty was done, I overheard two teen girls talking about how one of their mom's was outside waiting in the car and how they were so glad they could finally go to a concert.

Upon leaving the stage, Kitty was swarmed by a crowd of people with their phones out, one fan saying “JUST a snapchat, please. That's all I want!”. As I watched Kitty laugh and pose for what seemed like hundreds of selfies I couldn't help but think of how she told me she wasn't sure how much longer she could remain at the fame level she's at currently. But from looking at the way she was interacting with the gaggle of Etobicoke teens, it seems as if she’ll never get too big as to never again do shows in middle-of-nowhere suburbia.

Ian Borsuk is a writer looking for something to do in Etobicoke - @iancborsuk

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