For Saturday's Hip Hop Benefit, Word Is Bond
By Ji H. Chong
A&F Editor

The 2nd Annual Hip Hop for Charity event was part fundraiser for non-profit Dreamyard LA Poets, part glitzy concert, part community celebration-and all entertainment. Not since Common's brief visit in 1999 has the Sontag Greek Theatre hosted such socially conscious poetry and underground hip hop.

In that particular venue and on that particularly sunny So Cal day, the conditions were ripe to provide a festive atmosphere for the afternoon's activities. Ol' Dirty Bastard, a.k.a. Osirus a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus, would probably agree that hip hop is for the children and Hip Hop for Charity was a positive, family-oriented affair, a refreshing change from the typical drug-fueled hedonism of our residential community. Under the life-giving rays of Father Sun, a small child pranced around the Greek Theatre to the beats provided by DJ NOVA, Eric Nelson '03, while a sparse audience of younger college students and older adults peacefully lounged in small groups while waiting for the live performances to begin.

Cory Cofer a.k.a. BessKepp and Gia Scott-Heron PI '02, co-hosts of the spoken word portion of the day, led off around 2:40 p.m. with one poem each, both of which had clearly been previously performed since various audience members punctuated certain words or phrases by shouting them out. Scott-Heron, daughter of the legendary Gil Scott-Heron and an accomplished poet in her own right, read her popular piece "Dime," which humorously critiques the way many men, unlike myself, think about and treat women, particularly the practice of rating appearance on a 1-10 scale: "What is a dime anyway? A thin, weak fragment of pocket change. There is no such thing as a dime or a ten. I'd rather be a 9, then I know I can only get better." They were then followed by several spoken word poets from the five colleges and beyond, whose wordworks touched on various recurring themes, primarily the persistent injustices in our society and love and relationships within an all-encompassing, introspective emphasis on personal experience.

Absolutely zero offense intended to any of the poets, but as only a mere casual fan of spoken word with an undiagnosed case of attention deficit disorder, most of the abstract, free-flowing and personally reflective poetry was not for me. But as I looked around at the absorbed expressions of concentration on the faces of others in the crowd, a significant number of whom were other poets or performers scheduled for later, I understood that those poems weren't addressed to me anyway.

One of the spoken word highlights was LA poet Tony B. Conscious's piece about one of the major topics of the day: the mainstream decline and commodification of hip hop that threatened the art form's true nature. He made his point throughout the poem by cleverly working in names and phrases from the world of hip hop, i.e. "eat some Black Eyed Peas with Salt-N-Pepa."

By the time campus hip hop favorites Inverse took the stage at about 4:30 p.m., the crowd was a bit more sizeable, filling the seats in the first couple rows of the Greek Theatre, but nowhere near capacity. Inverse, consisting of MCs Tunji Balogun '04 and Toby Gangee, a.k.a. Dialek with DJ Hyphen, Dorian Bunker-Pardo PI '04, performed as usual-with humor and energy, entertaining an audience including many close, personal friends. One of their first songs, a twist of Nasty Nas's "NY State of Mind," was an ode to California from Bay native Tunji and self-described as "off the streets of LA" Dialect. They returned to Nas to close their half-hour set by rapping over a medley beat consisting of instantly recognizable instrumentals including Nas's "Made You Look;" the ever-popular final freestyle battle beat of 8 Mile, Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones, Pt. 2;" Philly rapper Freeway's "What We Do...;" and M.O.P.'s "Ante Up (Robbing-Hoodz Theory)."

At the close of Inverse's time on stage, I was made aware of the fact that headlining acts Mystic, a female hip hop singer/rapper from Oakland, and spoken word artist Ursula Rucker were actually sitting among the scattered crowd. There was no mob of fans surrounding either one of them, which is probably attributable to a little from column A, ignorance, and a little from column B, deference.

After watching each of them watching the performers on stage, I gathered up the courage to try and speak to one of them for some quotes. I waited until Rucker seemed to be in a moment of quiet and then introduced myself to her as a student journalist. For a moment, she had a puzzled look on her face while I asked if she might answer some questions, but she responded by asking me to hold on.

She turned to her companion on the left and said something to make him laugh out loud before turning back to me and politely declining to answer questions, saying that now was probably not the best time since she wanted to watch the group on-stage.

Paranoid android that I am, I couldn't get her friend's laughter out of my head, which was now hung in shame, and decided that I would take a short break from the show.

Unfortunately, by the time I returned I learned that the other headliner, Planet Asia, had already performed. An LA hip-hop/reggae group called Caribbean Xchange was on stage at that point, teaching the crowd what the unintelligible words to Sean Paul's "Gimme the Light" actually were ("Just gimme the light and pass the dro (Interior Parenthetical NOTE: short for hydro a.k.a. the sweet cheeba a.k.a. mary jane a.k.a. "finally, we can share everything") / Bust another bottle of Moe[t]").

They also led the crowd in a "No War" chant before finishing their time with a reggae-infused remix of 50 Cent's "In Da Club."

Going into the final stretch of the evening's top-billing performances as the sun set behind the horizon, the final size of the crowd filled roughly a third to a half of the Greek Theatre. In between spoken word poems from Ursula Rucker, I spoke to several audience members whose comments expressed differing opinions on the crowd. Sounun Tek, who was a visiting student from Colby College last year, said that "in addition to all the great acts, the most powerful thing is that the students came out to support the event." However, Sara Lieber '03 commented that "it sucks that the organizers made such an effort to bring all these awesome performers here and so few people bothered to show up."

Indeed, during Mystic's performance, the crowd assembled in the front of the stage barely filled a third of the semi-circle between the stage and the first row of seats. However, neither Mystic nor the energetic people who were there seemed to care much as Mystic proceeded to make musical magic with the mic.

Often compared to Lauryn Hill, Mystic's special blend of soft singing, effortlessly mixed with intelligent raps, alternately mesmerized the audience and got them jumping. Especially during the song, "The Life," which I had never heard before but was not surprised to later discover was her breakout single, the crowd blissfully sang along to the extremely simple yet surprisingly catchy chorus. Stylishly dressed in gray and white Ecko warmups, Mystic's hypnotizing presence kept us all singing along through the refrain of "good-bye" in her final song.

Not since J-Live's Edmunds Ballroom appearance two years ago where the crowd chanted "It's All O-ver" had I been so paradoxically happy to celebrate the end of a show.

But the show wasn't quite over yet. Frequent campus performers The Illuminatives took the stage to wrap up the 2nd Annual Hip Hop for Charity. Although the group, consisting of long-time friends Yohance Serrant '03, Elly Estro (Larry Rodgers), and Serge the Wrecknition (Serge Mikailian), was not originally scheduled to be the final act of the night, it seemed appropriate that they would close.

Even if Hip Hop for Charity was not well attended in comparison to the size of the entire student body population, the people who did attend had a great time. On the one hand, some were disappointed that the event did not attract a wider audience and like Lieber, attributed it to being because "Claremont sucks and Pomona is fucking homogenous as hell." On the other hand, like Tek, others were satisfied that the folks you expected to see at such an event did come out to support their own and as long as they enjoyed it, what else mattered? As Serrant took the stage, he mentioned that those who knew him knew how much work it took him and fellow organizer Clarence Mitchell '03 to organize and plan the event that raised well over $800 in donations and supplies for charity. He then promptly began the first song of the final performance of the night, which was much cheered and supported by a sea of familiar faces.