By Chad Taylor
soundcheck@dmcityview.com

Slaughterhouse headlines the first annual 420 Smokefest on Friday, April 20, at the Seven Flags Event Center. Opening acts include Xeroxt8, Clik and Horizon. Doors open at 7 p.m., and tickets are $25 and $30, available through ticketmaster.

Quiz the average person about the date 4/20, and you’re liable to get one of two replies. They’ll either say something about it being Hitler’s birthday, or they’ll pinch their thumb and forefinger together, bring them to their lips and inhale sharply.

This curious duality means that 4/20 is a date well known and even celebrated, not only among skinheads and racists, but Deadheads and rappers. Of those four groups, two tend to do their celebrating in concert form, and of those two, only one is partial to something that isn’t 100 percent demonstrably terrible music. It’s not the skinheads.

However, in this instance, the rappers and the skinheads do have one thing in common: The date is being used more for promotional purposes than any genuine application. I mean, sure, I wouldn’t bet against some or all of the men taking the stage this Friday being weed smokers. But when you think of the phrase “Smokefest,” you conjure up images of consenting adults engaged in civil disobedience in some park or out in the vast expanse of a desert festival. You don’t normally think of an all-ages show in the middle of Clive.

The headliners of this particular event are hip hop super-group Slaughterhouse. Consisting of members Joe Budden, Crooked I, Royce Da 5’9 and Joell Ortiz, Slaughterhouse is swinging through Des Moines as a part of their current tour in advance of their highly anticipated second album, “Welcome to: Our House,” due out June 12.

Set to be released under Eminem’s Shady Records, “Our House” is also executive produced and mixed by Em (Marshall Mathers), which has taken the album’s sound in unexpected directions.

“We’re still working out minor tweaks, but it’s way more done than people know,” said Royce 5’9 during a phone interview from Austin, Texas. “Marshall actually mixed the entire album, and that wasn’t even the original plan, so we’re super excited about that. He’s just taking songs to another level.”

All four artists are extremely talented in their own right, with Royce in particular being highly praised and admired for his rhymes, but he is quick to point out the added dimension that Eminem’s influence has had on the album.

“He’s turning it into a movie. It’s becoming way more visual, when he comes and puts his stamp on it, if you will,” he said.

Time and again, the group has praised Eminem’s talents on both sides of the booth glass.

“Real talk: A lot of people don’t give Eminem enough credit for his production and his arrangement and his mixing,” said Crooked I. “What he’s doing to add to the album is phenomenal, and I think he deserves props and a salute for that.”

Slaughterhouse deserves a salute for a tour schedule that is nothing short of break-neck. The Des Moines show will be the group’s 13th city in 15 days. And they don’t stop there, playing in Omaha the next night and 11 more cities in as many days. But the pace doesn’t seem to be hurting the group, as they’ve continued to get solid reviews everywhere they go and are clearly playing with genuine excitement over the upcoming release of the new album. And on April 20, that excitement is on display for you, dear readers, at an event that may or may not have anything to do with the “holiday” it proclaims to be celebrating. Who’s holding? CV