My experience with last weekend’s Rock The Bells concert at Randall’s Island was a little disappointing.

First, Ticketmaster never mailed my tickets, and I was told to pick them up at will call. Second, I overslept, traveled like two hours via subway, foot and $30 ferry ride, and arrived at Randall’s Island right as the rain started to pour. And finally, the will call line was two hours long in the rain. So by the time I even got in the show, it was half over and I had missed many of the acts I wanted to see.

This week, however, I was pleased to come across three great reviews of Rock The Bells, all written from different perspectives. Newsday published a review that covered mainly the headliners, but stressed the point that “hip-hop isn’t dead”:

Sorry, haters, hip-hop isn’t dead. It may be in trouble, dogged by ongoing attacks on its language and imagery in the wake of Don Imus’ racist remarks, as well as a 33 percent drop-off in the genre’s sales for the first half of the year. But Rock the Bells, a 10-hour festival of nearly two dozen acts at Randalls Island throughout the weekend, not only provided plenty of proof of how potent the genre still is, but it offered a blueprint of ideas rappers could use to make hip-hop even more powerful in the future.

From Newsday’s ‘Review: Rock The Bells at Randall’s Island‘

Next, I came across a review in Rolling Stone that revolved around headliners Rage Against the Machine and their political views:

At the completion of each song everyone waited for de la Rocha to address the audience and say something to rival his famous Coachalla rant in which he said that Bush “should be hung, and tried and shot.” At the end of “Bullet in the Head,” he finally opened his mouth. He began by saying he was misquoted at Coachella and that the president should be “tried like a war criminal and then hung and shot.” He went on to say that the only way to end the war is for everyone to “rise up like the youth in Iraq and bring these fuckers to their knees.”

From Rolling Stone’s ‘Rage Against the Machine and Hip-Hop Greats Ignite New York Crowd at Rock the Bells‘

And finally, I came across a review that paid attention to the underground cats, as The New York Times reviewed the concert in light of the Paid Dues tour which was playing the second stage:

The much smaller Paid Dues stage wasn’t for rookies either; it was for veterans of the indie-rap circuit, most of whom know how to work a crowd, no matter the size. Slug, best known as half of the duo Atmosphere, declaimed his lyrics while grinning and gesticulating; Sage Francis did something similar, only with more politics and less grinning.

Murs, the rapper who organizes Paid Dues, performed with Slug and with his own Living Legends crew. None of this seemed like “the future” of hip-hop, but both stages pointed to a possible future for rock-friendly rappers who have outgrown (or never fit) radio: a summer on the road, entertaining the cargo-shorts crowd. There are worse ways to make a living.

From New York Times ‘This Hip-Hop Future Looks Like Yesterday‘

Overall, big media outlets did a decent job covering hip-hop for a change. Maybe next year I’ll get there on time and be able to write something up myself. PEACE.