Well, if you know ANYTHING about me at all, you know that I love music more than just about anything else on this planet. Although I listen to everything from Rock to Country, my heart belongs to hip-hop. I grew up listening to hip-hop and can have hip-hop conversations for days without once being bored. Just something about it really pulls me towards it. SO this past week when my boy, Kevin, at work asked if I was down to see a FREE show in Brooklyn featuring Slick Rick, Salt N Pepa, and Naughty by Nature.....I was all about it. I grew up on these acts. I remember being a toddler and hearing my aunt play Salt n Pepa. I remember being in 10 years old when someone introduced me to the overlapping rhyme style of Slick Rick. And I remember vividly having arguments in 8th grade about who was going to be bigger, Naughty by Nature of MC Hammer. So, seeing this concert was no doubt on my "to do" list.
So Monday rolls around. It's the day of the concert. It starts at 7, so we gotta be there by 5. And of course, anytime I have to do anything after chilling at home for a while, I get that "do I REALLY wanna go" feeling. But then the "you'll be sorry if you don't" feeling trumped it quickly. I get in my car and head to Flatbush to meet up with Kevin. I had a feeling that being lily white, I needed to at least be with my sponsor to roll into a park in mid-BK.
We get there, and find great seats dead center, near the back. We didn't feel like standing for 4 hours, so this was working out great. This park quickly packed in at least 5,000 people. Blunts being rolled and smoked everywhere. People having a great time. This is what I love about hip-hop. We passed the pre-show time playing "spot the honky". We got up to 12. I know knew how Kevin felt when we drag him out to Long Island. Especially when a former Black Panther got up onstage to go on his "Hate whitey" rant. Which, honestly, does more bad than good. Most people are trying to get past all that terrible race tension and you have your certain individuals trying to rile people up. Let's stop putting blame to one another and work together to make the world a better place. Ok, enough with the "give peace a chance" segment. But for real.....racism is ugly. We know it's still around, but c'mon, let's work on improving it.
So the show finally got started at about 8:10pm. Slick Rick lead it off with classic after classic. His stage presence wasn't all that great. But to hear the crowd rap word for word every song was incredible.
After his set. Naughty by Nature took the stage. These. Dudes. RIPPED IT!!!!! Their energy was phenomenal! People were going nuts. Rapping along. These dudes rolled out every single hot song they had with the passion and energy of young dudes trying to get put on. It was spine-tingling. I'm a huge fan of this group. So seeing them put on the show they did just made my year. I hope to catch them perform again.
After Naughty by Nature, we decided to split to beat the crowd instead of the Salt n Pepa performance. I mean, two dudes can't really get into "Whatta Man" and "Shoop" too tough in this setting. We instead searched Flatbush for some Caribbean food and Kevin took me for a small tour of his hood. We eventually found a spot, and had some of the BEST jerk chicken and rice I have ever had. I'm actually wanting some as I type this. Yummmm.....
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