I'll admit it. I have an unyielding obsession with anything 80's. Sour Patch Kids, Soap-On-A-Rope, Alf lunchboxes, The Cosby Show - you name it, I probably spent a good portion of my measly $20/week allowance on it.
It goes without saying that when Rock the Bells blew into Miami's Bayfront Park Arena, I was happier than Angela Bauer when she walked in on Tony Danza, wet, lathered up, and showering on "Who's the Boss?" This year's lineup featured a unique hybrid of old skool denizens: Mos Def, Kidz In The Hall, The Pharcyde, and headliner A Tribe Called Quest. The New Regime received equal billing with the likes of Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface, and Philly ingenue, Santogold. But, it was De La Soul that had me turning cartwheels. In the three days leading up to Rock the Bells, I practically danced all the way to work with the best of "3 Feet High and Rising" blasting through my headphones. De La, you see, represents much that is cyclical in this world - the youth and vigor of D.A.I.S.Y, the rampant, viral social dillusionment in "De La Soul is Dead," and the Walmart-friendly McRecord that was "The Grind Date." After months of sieving through tired Billboard chart toppers on the radio, I was antsy. Rabidly hungry, in fact, to sink my teeth into some good music.
On Saturday afternoon, The Israeli Princess and I pulled up to a veritable explosion of politically high-minded rhymes. By the time we scrambled onto Bayfront Park's grassy knoll, M-1 and stic.man had launched into "It's Bigger Than Hip Hop." Saying that the crowd was pumped would have been a gross understatement. Even the Heineken beer guy had spontaneously hiked his shirt up to waist-level, and was chanting along with the crowd, "One thing about music, when it's real they get scared/Got us slavin' for welfare/Ain't got no food, clothes, or healthcare."
Indeed. All around me, young city hipsters with asymmetrical bangs were looking bored and sardonic, while the South Dade contingent thronged the grounds with easy grins and warm beers. I blinked. Were those....J Crew couples, with starched cotton shirts and khakis, bopping to "Till We Get There?" Check. And was that an overweight goth kid with nose-to-navel piercings, ala Wichita, Kansas, sharing a j with a Mr. T lookalike? Check. The crowd was clearly as diverse as one could get, and yet, the common denominator at this show turned out to be neon Converse high-tops. Everyone was rocking them. I looked at my feet, then over at The Israeli Princess'. Flip flops. Ruining Presidential elections and street cred since 2004.
Next up was Brooklyn hip hop impresario, Mos Def. He took the stage to thunderous applause, wasting no time in informing the crowd that "Corporate forces is runnin' this rap ***/Old white men is runnin' this rap ***/Viacom is runnin' this rap ***/Mos Def is runnin' this rap ***." And run the rap *** he did. The former Black Star frontman launched into his sleeper hit, "Brooklyn." The rhymes were the same - a trip down memory lane, the recollection of Izod shirts and his childhood in Bed-Stuy. But gone was the steely, sometimes hard-edged inflection in his voice. Mos Def seems to have embraced his status as one of the Founding Fathers of Hip Hop, and as a result, has emerged as a seasoned performer who is finally comfortable in his own skin. Nearly ten years later "New World Water" was just as fresh as I remember it. The quirky, tinkling riffs actually sounded better than when "Black On Both Sides" hit record stores in '99. To my right, the girl with the long pink dreads sighed, closed her eyes and leaned back on her beach towel, soaking it all in. It made me think of a conversation that I had with my nine year old nephew.
"Mos Def? Who's that?"
"Only one of the most gifted hip hop artists, ever."
"I don't know him. He must be old. I like T Pain."
I watched the 16 olds around me dance barefoot, toes curling in the grass, while Mos Def ripped on contemporary rappers "moving fast, but thinking slow" in "Close Edge." Mos Def may be old, but that cat gets better with age. Take that, T Pain.
The high point of my day arrived when De La Soul took the stage. They opened with "Rock Co. Cane Flow", the wryly sardonic ditty about a hip hop act that achieves and super-stardom, only to be dogged by "news vans" and the folly of "lights, camera, action", until it's "too old to rhyme, too bad, too late." For anyone else who wasn't there to witness the magic, De La Soul was anything but too old, or too late. Alongside Ghostface, they killed with "He Comes" and "Shopping Bags (She Got From You)." Next to the frozen lemonade stand, a two year old girl was firmly esconced in a spirited pop and lock showdown with her father, while Black Sheep belted out the immortal lyrics that everyone born before 1980 knows:
"Engine engine number 9/On the NY Transit Line/If my train goes off the track/Pick it up/Pick it up/Pick it up!"
Watching them, I realized that this was how the gift of good music gets passed down, from generation to generation. Not through slick marketing campaigns, or viral Youtube videos. Not through celebrity endorsements, or the latest focus groups. Not even through us. Good music lives on through two year old kids, who, on a hot Saturday afternoons, decide to kick off their sandals, let the breeze run through their hair, and dance unashamedly to That One Great Song. And in the summer of 1989, wasn't life a lot simpler?
"You can get with this/Or you can get with that."
See, kids? This is the infallibility of good music - it actually makes sense.
