Here is a review of the Pioneers of Hip Hop concert someone posted a link about a few weeks ago. Doug E. Fresh, MC Hammer, MC Lyte, Kool Moe Dee, and Whodini.

It sounds like it was a fun show, and Upper Marlboro is my hometown. I should have flown out for this. Damn.


An Old-School Education
For One Night Only, Hip-Hop Back in the Day

By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 30, 2006; D01
http://www.washingtonpost...42_pf.html

They came for the answer to that urgent question: Where do old rappers go?

Friday night, the lines moved at a steady clip as nearly 3,000 people filed into the Pioneers of Hip Hop concert at Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro. Mostly in their thirties to fifties, the crowd was clamoring for music more than 20 years old -- the early years, when hip-hop had just become a phenomenon.

The rappers, some graying at the temples, included Kool Moe Dee, MC Lyte, Whodini, Doug E. Fresh, MC Hammer. None had a new album to promote; MC Lyte had her last hit in 1996 and only Hammer has released music in the new millennium, but you couldn't have paid the crowd to be anywhere else.

Women in colorful tunics were escorted by guys in playa-playa rayon shirts and nylon track suits with fresh white sneaks. In a rap culture obsessed with youth -- Lil' Flip, Lil Wayne, Lil' Romeo, Young Jeezy, Young Rome, Young Guru -- these are the grown rap fans, people who remember the 1980s Fresh Fest tours, when hip-hop was all about a dope beat and a tight rhyme; a fly, fly girlie and a fat gold chain. They remember rap before it turned hard. Before it sold itself for a spot in MTV rotation. And they were drawn by a night of hip-hop without guns and beeyotches.

Tony Latney, 44, a letter carrier from Laurel, was in the lobby waiting for wife Wanda, 11-year-old daughter Marian and 14-year-old niece Nekia. His son Edward, 10, stood nearby. "I've raised them on 1980s music," said Latney, who brought the kids so they could learn the old dances and see how much fun hip-hop used to be. "I'mmo Cabbage Patch, I'mmo Smurf, I'mmo do the Running Man," Latney said. I wanted to bring them to a concert "where I can bump into somebody and I don't have to worry about being shot." He pines for old times, hopes the pendulum is starting to swing back toward the old-school acts.

Inside the arena, as speakers blared the 1986 hit "Pee Wee's Dance," emcee Antonio Bruton, co-owner of show sponsor Poetry in Motion Entertainment, asked if there were any old-school heads in the house. Kool Moe Dee, born Mohandas Dewese, belonged to one of the earliest rap groups on record, the Treacherous Three. The fortysomething artist took the stage still wearing his signature dark glasses and black leather suit, updated with a cellphone in the ear. "How far back y'all go?" he asked before he rapped "Go See the Doctor," his mid-'80s paean to the infectious hookup.

An exuberant "Wild Wild West" felt a little surreal because Kool Moe Dee is big in the tummy parts now, and those '80s dance moves hit different. Then MC Lyte, aka Lana Moorer, took the stage tinier and more sophisticated than we remember, in cargo jeans and a black jacket, wearing more clothes than all the current female rap artists combined. The rapper who won over critics with her 1988 debut and continued to make hits into the mid-'90s rapped "Poor Georgie," "Cold Rock a Party" and the sexually suggestive (when was the last time hip-hop was just suggestive?) "Keep on Keepin' On."

I found myself a new [brotha] this year

Who knows how to handle this here?

Backstage, she had talked about the people's hunger for adult hip-hop and lyrics that stayed with you. Onstage, her dense, poetic rhymes were so rapid-fire that the crowd jumped and whistled and waved mad love at her flow.

When DJ K-Roc asked who knew the words to her part in the hip-hop collaboration "Self-Destruction," D.C. police officer Tracie Cannon, 35, and Detective Shelly Anderson, 40, both took the stage to rhyme.

Leave the guns and the crack and the knives alone

MC Lyte's on the microphone

Bum rushin' and crushin', snatchin' and taxin'

I cram to understand why brother's don't be maxin'

There's only one disco, they'll close one more

You ain't guarding the door

So what you got a gun for?

Do you rob the rich and give to the poor?

Yo Daddy-O, school 'em some more

Laughing like kids as they left the stage, Anderson said, "We're old-school junkies. We know every rapper in that video, it was all about being positive."

The wait between acts got long but even the intermission felt like a party for black insider music, though anyone who was feeling it was welcome to listen in. It was rappers Salt-N-Pepa, crooners DeBarge, then Rick James's "Mary Jane," for those who understood that before his "Super Freak" ever hit the white wedding reception circuit, he was already dope for "bustin' out of L7 square."

Whodini hit the stage and a bald Ecstasy, John Fletcher, let his trademark black leather hat slide onto his back. They danced the Prep and the Reebok, they sang "Friends" and "I'm a Ho," and "Freaks Come Out at Night," with a spot-on observation:

You could know someone all their life, but might not know they're a freak unless you see them at night.

Fletcher said backstage that "after 23 years, 24 years in the business, it's a blessing just to be able to do it. Just to find out that there's a market out there for rappers over 30, rappers over 40, that's big."

Human beat box Doug E. Fresh had the crowd waving and wishing him well on "Keep Risin' to the Top," but everybody was waiting for "The Show/La Di Da Di." While the crowd rapped the words they knew in their sleep, he used his lips as a percussive instrument, literally spitting a bass line, delivering a sound so meta-rhythmically clicky, tap dancers seemed to be in his throat.

All night the crowd had been building to MC Hammer, by far the most commercially successful artist in the show, who dropped the "MC" when he got crossover big, but picked it back up for Upper Marlboro. From 1988 to 1994 he had one platinum and three multiplatinum albums, and the crowd was primed for hits like "Turn This Mutha Out," "U Can't Touch This" and "Too Legit to Quit."

"That's right, come on, it's Hammertime, work that body," yelled 56-year-old Gloria Goode, standing in the front row. Old-school hip-hop was the music she heard when she was clubbing three nights a week, getting home just in time to change for work. The widow and mother of two from Upper Marlboro jumped up and down.

The elements were all there -- the high energy, the lithe, impossibly funky dancers, Hammer's engaging showmanship, although the details were ceded to time. The dancers were half Hammer's 44 years, there were extended breaks between songs and Hammer's showmanship was strategically calculated to let him last the set.

Amy Adkins of Herndon echoed the feeling of a lot of the crowd: The concert's production values were sub-par in places, a lot of the rappers didn't finish all their songs and Hammer maybe should have done fewer songs or cut down the time for water breaks. Still, all that was secondary to the sweet evocation of going back in the day. "People were just psyched about reliving their junior high, high school and college years," said the 32-year-old programming manager for AOL. "I'm not sure if it's the time in our lives that makes it so important, or if it's the type of hip-hop we hear today, but it used to be all about battle raps and having fun and making plays on words," she said. "People just wanted to let loose" and remember when hip-hop was so much fun.

The crowd filed out after midnight, feeling tired, feeling like one nation under the groove.

Crystal Davidson, 28, a legal assistant from Arlington, and mom Maxine, 50, who just moved to the area from Sacramento, held hands with Crystal's 5-year-old son Masai. He had danced the entire first half of the show then fell asleep.

It was a good night, an old-school night. A night for families, couples, kids, beats, rhymes, life.

Special correspondent Sufiya Abdur-Rahman contributed to this report.

Sounds great!

MC Lyte

1. Intro / Back To The Old School-Just Ice
2. Peter Piper-Run DMC
3. Pump That Bass-Original Concept
4. Brooklyn Rock The Best-Cutmaster DC
5. Do Or Die Bed Stuy-Divine Sounds
6. Leave It To The Drums-Tricky Tee
7. Woppit-B Fats
8. It's A Demo-Kool G Rap & Polo
9. Go Stetsa I-Stetsasonic
10. Breakdown-Fat Boys
11. Mr Big Stuff-Heavy D
12. Make The Music With Your Mouth-Biz Markie
13. Coast To Coast-Word Of Mouth
14. Bang Zoom-The Real Roxanne
15. Back O Burn-T LA Rock
16. Bring The Beat Back-Steady B
17. Cold Getting Dumb-Just Ice
18. Eric B Is President-Eric B & Rakim
19. South Bronx-B.D.P.

20. The Bridge-MC Shan
21. Nuthin'-Dougie Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew
22. Hold It Now, Hit It-Beastie Boys
23. My Adidas-Run DMC
24. Girls Ain't Nuthin' But Trouble-Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
25. Girls Ain't Nuthin' But Trouble-Ice Cream Tee
26. Ego Trippin'-UltraMagnetic MC's
27. Funky Beat-Whodini
28. Paybacks A Mutha-King Tee
29. Knowledge Me-Original Concept
30. Six In The Morning-Ice T
31. Paul Revere-Beastie Boys
32. My Mic Sounds Nice-Salt & Pepa
33. Pee Wee's Dance-Joeski Love
34. Do The Fila-MC Boob
35. Go See The Doctor-Kool Moe Dee
36. Latoya-Just Ice & DMX
37. It's My Beat-Sweet Tee & Jazzy Joyce
38. Everlasting Bass-Rodney O & Joe Cooley
39. Check Out My Melody-Eric B & Rakim