A Tribe Called Quest, the Pharcyde, De La Soul. The date is ... last Saturday?!
The 1994 — excuse me, 2008 — Rock the Bells Tour is well under way, and I was there at the Los Angeles installment to catch up with a truly epic bill of hip-hop greats, both old and new. This year’s lineup is no joke, combining the aforementioned, fully reunited legends with contemporary, sure-to-be-hall-of-famers like Nas and Mos Def, and of course several up and coming “kids" (Kids in the Hall and Cool Kids, to be exact) to form a monumental trifecta of hip-hop’s past, present and future. Laugh it up, you lucky New Yorkers, but the rest of the country will be just fine without Jay-Z.
Hip-hop artists are genuinely the hardest workers in showbiz, as every artist we spoke with had all sorts of projects in the works. Expect more from Murs, Rakim, De La Soul, Method Man, Ghostface and Raekwon (but don’t let all the other reunions get your hopes up for catching a glimpse of Wu-Tang).