You know a music festival is stacked to the gills with talent when Rakim, considered the father of modern hip-hop lyricism, is stuck playing the 2:30 p.m. slot in the scorching San Bernardino summer sun.
But Rock the Bells isn't just any festival, having emerged in its fifth year as the genre's preeminent annual event, with the Pomona-based Guerilla Union seemingly topping itself each time in assembling a veritable murderers' row of artists.
Indeed, in the course of 12 hours Saturday at the Glen Helen Pavilion, a neophyte could've received a terrific tutorial in Rap 101, with nearly everything in the genre's 30-year life span represented: old-school hip-hop; left-of-center Native Tongues movement; grimy New York City '90s street rap; late '90s underground eclecticism; and the latest school of Golden Age-inspired artists who rocked a smaller second stage to small yet passionate crowds.
If there was a message to be gleaned, it was that old adage of strength in numbers, with legendary groups, A Tribe Called Quest and the Pharcyde, turning in the day's most kinetic sets.
Tribe, reunited for its first Los Angeles show in years, whipped the crowd into a frenzy from the moment Q-Tip hit the stage with Mos Def in the role of hype man. Q-Tip, nicknamed "the Abstract," kicked an impressive half-hour solo set of material from "The Renaissance," his second solo album, set for release this fall.
When long-time partner Phife and sometime sidekick Jarobi emerged to join Tip, the raucous roar could've been heard 55 miles west at the Los Angeles County border. Running through a greatest hits set list ranging from debut single "Bonita Applebum" to their final smash, "Find a Way," both Phife and Tip seemed imbued with the passion typically found in younger, less-established artists.
Though a perfunctory, mailed-in performance might've still engendered euphoria from the rapturous crowd, both rappers maintained a feverish intensity throughout, dripping with sweat -- Tip scatting, wriggling, gliding across the stage; Phife, towel over his head, Kobe Bryant shirt on his back, evoking notions of another great underrated figure in Lakers history, that ultimate second banana, Stu Lantz.
As for the Pharcyde, it may not have been the first time they "rocked the bells," having played the festival's Anaheim show in 2004. But Saturday's performance seemed to convey a deeper meaning.
