My girl, my homie Chris Carr and I checked out Rock the Bells this past Sunday, August 3rd, in Jones Beach, NY.

Due to the fact that  Rage Against the Machine and Wu-Tang Clan headlined last year’s R-T-B, I hold a personal bias that 2007 was the best year (so far) for the tour, but this year also was also pretty awesome.

Here’s some backstage flicks from Chris (who has a real camera) and myself (still trying to figure out how to use my iPhone camera).

See if you can spot the difference…

Rick the Ruler

Redman and Method Man

Jay-Z showed up to show love to his buddy NaS. How funny would it have been if NaS had played “Ether” right when Jay hopped off stage? I guess that’s only funny to mean spirited people like myself.

The rafters in the Nikon Theater have this reflective mesh film to deter people from taking pictures of any shows. It doesn’t do a particularly good job stopping people from taking pictures, but it does put a damper on the overall experience. In any event, that’s a lot of people.

According to NaS, all he needs is “One Mic.” I guess that’s true.

Q-tip, Phife and Shaheed hadn’t played NYC as a group in 11 years before this show. I was never a big Tribe fan, but seeing the energy that crowd gave them was definitely ill.

As far as hip-hop festival shows go, Rock the Bells 2008 NY was a pretty solid bill with hometown heroes such as DJ Premier, Talib Kweli, EPMD, Pharoahe Monch, Dres, Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Fame, Jay-Z and bunch of others showing up to support.

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

To see the rest of the shots, check out Chris’ site here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 05:00 and is filed under HISTORY 101, culture, music, awesome, hip-hop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.