3rd Annual Brooklyn Hiphop Festival
Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, 06.23.07

Just from the lineup booked for this year’s Brooklyn Hiphop Festival you knew it was going to be something special.  Accompany that with perfect weather and beautiful views of New York’s bridges and waters and the day was near perfect.  From the start, you really knew this would be the event of the summer in

The first act I caught was Tanya Morgan, who really got things started with their set around 2:00.  The last time I saw them was about a year ago at Southpaw with Hell Razah and DCQ and their live act has gotten even better over that time span.  A lot of people at the festival had never heard them before but were really feeling what they heard.  ‘We Be’ had a lot of people moving and ‘Sitting at the Bar’ went over really well with the crowd.  Von Pea and Ilwil simply have great onstage chemistry and they certainly made a lot of new fans after their performance. 

Following Tanya Morgan were two non-hiphop acts, Emily King and El Michel Affair.  This was a nice move by whoever organized the concert, getting in some live music in addition to rappers.  It’s always good to see some bands and musicians with instruments; it really adds a nice balance to things and broke it up well so that it wasn’t six straight hours of rappers.  Not to overlook all of the original music that El Michel Affair performed, but their instrumental version of ‘Iron’s Theme’ was awesome and the appropriate touch with Ghostface headlining.

Large Professor was next up to bat and at this point the field area surrounding the stage really started filling in with him on stage and an all-star lineup on deck.  I’ve seen Large Pro plenty of times DJing parties or showing up at New York shows but never had the chance to catch him do his own thing on the mic before.  It was great to hear a lot of the 1^st Class classics live like ‘In the Sun’ and ‘Bout That Time’ which were real strong live. 

Mad Skillz had one of the best sets, although I’m probably a little biased since he has been one of favorites ever since his Eastern Conference days.  He did a lot of the expected like ‘The Nod Factor’ and this year’s wrap up, but it really made the day getting to hear him spit his verses from ‘B-Boy Document.’Although Sean Price was supposed to be up next, you knew it wasn’t going to be only the lineup you saw on the flyers posted.  Tons of unannounced guests showed up at this point, including Parrish from EPMD, Smif N Wessun, Jeru the Damaja, Chubb Rock and probably a few others I am leaving out.  Dres from Black Sheep was also on stage for a bit, doing material off of his new album and of course closing with ‘The Choice is Yours.’ 

Sean Price eventually came out and did his thing with much of the Boot Camp family in attendance.  The only thing that didn’t go so smooth was Consequence’s set, which was cut short due to the event needing to end by 8:00.  At around 6:00 you almost knew this was going to happen to somebody, as there were still a lot of acts left and really not that much time. 

Consequence came on stage around 7:15 or so, and after only about three or four tracks he was told that the next one would be his final.  This clearly didn’t go over well with him and you could sense that Ralph McDaniels who was hosting the event was genuinely upset that they had to cut somebody short.  It was unfortunate cause he had just ripped ‘The Good, The Bad, The Ugly’ but its understandable that needed they more than fifteen minutes for Ghostface who was headlining the event.

As the sun started to set, Ghostface came out to put the finishing touches on the day.  ‘Metal Lungies’ got the crowd really hyped and he worked his way through his catalog that has really established himself as one of the nicest ever.  Although ‘One’ was included in the set, it would have been nice to hear some more from Supreme Clientele and his earlier records.  As a Wu fan since 36 Chambers who catches any family member when they are in New York, sometimes you can only hear ‘C.R.E.A.M’ and ‘Shimmy Shimmy’ live so many times.  He has a ridiculous amount of tracks that diehard fans would kill to see live that it becomes a little repetitive seeing some of the same songs live all the time.  On the other hand, I probably just see them live way too much and I know how exciting it is the first time you hear those classics live from one of the clansmen.  Towards the end of his set, Ghost said he had a special guest with him and introduced Fat Joe who came out to perform ‘ New York.’  He only did that one but remained on the stage for the rest of Ghost’s set and you could see he was totally feeling Ghost and the entire event. 

Twenty or so rappers and six hours later, the festival came to an end and the entire event really went smoothly.  Hopefully every one keeps donating to Brooklyn Bodega so that this event can remain a yearly tradition in

(the almighty) Tanya Morgan

Emily King

El Michels Affair

Large Pro

Mad Skillz

The shadows of Smif n Wessun

Sean P

Throwin the W’s up for Bush

Since the face been revealed, game got real

Fat Joe swings through