Celebrate Brooklyn (6/28/08) Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion at Prospect Park Bandshell, featuring EMC, with DJs Premier & Ali Shaheed Muhammed and hosts Special Ed and Buckshot

So glad I got to attend this show. I’m taking those who missed it through the highlights and lowlights of the concert.

The full lineup in order of performance:

Chip-Fu of the Fu-Schnickens and Ali Shaheed Muhammed

EMC (Masta Ace, Wordsworth, Punchline and Stricklin, with Frequency on the wheels of steel)

O.C.

DJ Premier

Jeru the Damaja

Chubb Rock

Buckshot and Special Ed

Crooklyn Dodgers reunion (ft.Masta Ace, Buckshot, Special Ed, Chubb Rock, O.C. and Jeru the Damaja)

I was a little out of it that night so the order may be off for some of the songs I’ve listed. I got there around 7:15pm, paid my $3 admission and walked inside to see Sadat X and Jeru the Damaja chilling side by side. I decided not to bug them, but I was secretly pretty damn hyped. I also caught the members of EMC getting ready for their show.

I made my way into the crowd halfway through Chip-Fu’s performance. Chip-Fu performed with an equally tiny hypeman and Ali Shaheed Muhammed from A Tribe Called Quest on the turntables. Chip killed it with intense, frenzied performances of the three Fu-Schnickens songs everyone knows: “La Schmoove”, “Ring The Alarm” and “True Fu-Schnick”. He did a dancehall song off his new mixtape and a quick freestyle over the beat for Lil’ Wayne’s “A Milli” (!), that was actually pretty dope. He finished off with an insanely fast a capella freestyle. I didn’t really feel like the crowd was feeling his set, but he definitely put on a great performance.

Buckshot and Special Ed introduced each performer before they got on stage and did a bit of call-and-response with the crowd.

EMC got on next, with their producer Frequency on the decks. They did some call-and-response with the audience, getting the audience to greet each member and Frequency. Their energy was crazy. They started with Disposable ArtsThe Show‘s title track and moved into “Feel It”, with Stricklin doing the chorus. Wordsworth brought his kid out on stage and got him to swing his arms in time with the beat. It was pretty damn awesome. Strick filmed a fair amount of the EMC set on stage, and I was little disappointed they didn’t involve him more in the show (no pun intended). “What It Stand For” brought the damn house down. Afterward, Punch and Words jumped into the crowd for some great freestyles.

O.C. started with his verse from “War Games” but the performance definitely suffered from the lack of Organized Konfusion. Then he did his verse from D.I.T.C.’s “Thick” and got the audience to throw up Ls in memory of Big L. He went into “Born 2 Live” and got the audience to finish parts of the chorus. He did “My World” and then “Time’s Up”. The latter got the biggest response, naturally. The minute the bass line dropped, people went nuts. He did a freestyle a capella, prefacing it with an explanation that he doesn’t feel there should be any separation of hip-hop into real or fake, and got the crowd to applaud for “hip-hop in general.”

An intermission later, DJ Premier was on the decks. He had a sound problem early in the set and just cut this record to pieces while testing it. Once it was solved, he hyped the crowd up a bit. Then he dropped his first record of the night: Royce da 5’9’s “Boom”. All the audience had to hear was the “tick, tick” intro to start wylin’ out. Primo’s first 3 songs were a basic Premier 101: “Boom”, “Nas Is Like”, Common’s “The 6th Sense”. Primo sped up the tracks and shouted along with select parts of the records. He played the intro beat to Group Home’s “Supa Star” then dropped “Living Proof”. He followed it up with a Gang Starr set with some non-obvious choices like dope b-side “The ?uestion Remains” and “Work” off Moment Of Truth. He finished with “You Know My Steez.” I should point out that Premier shouted out Jeru at the end of the set, so hopefully things are okay between the two.

Next up was Jeru the Damaja, who launched right into “D Original” and followed it up with “Da Bitchez”. Jeru has a pretty funny stage presence, even suggesting that in order to avoid offending anyone, we could use “da witches” instead. Then he said, “Nah, fuck that” and launched into “Da Bitchez.” Naturally he got the crowd to chant “the bitches” on the chorus and people fucking loved it. He went into “One Day” from Wrath Of The Math and then got into a song from his new album that didn’t go down as well. He also performed “Ain’t The Devil Happy” and a very dope version of “Ya Playin’ Yaself.”Craziest moment of the night was when Jeru called up Sadat X and Junkyard Juju from the Beatnuts, who both rapped over the instrumental to “Shook Ones (Pt. II). Once they left, he teased the audience with the beat to “Come Clean” but made them cheer before he got into it. Jeru got sections of the crowd to chant different parts of the chorus.

He surrendered the stage to a bespectacled Chubb Rock and a DJ. Chubb acted as a sort of a hypeman for the DJ on stage as the DJ spun classic 70s and 80s breaks. He played Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long”, Parliament’s “Not Just Knee Deep” and so on. Chubb introduced the songs and hyped the crowd up for each one. The older cats in the crowd really dug it and the new jacks like myself just danced. The rastas in the crowd were pretty amped and started chanting “Bo! Bo! Bo!”, which was awesome. After introducing the songs for a bit, he did a very energetic performance of “Treat ‘Em Right” and the crowd knew every word. Magic.

Chubb Rock got off and Special Ed and Buckshot got on stage but instead of introducing the next act as they usually did, actually performed. The pair listed their classic songs with the DJ spinning the instrumentals for each one. Ed did “I Got It Made”, which was dope. Evil Dee then got behind the turntables and shouted “Evil Dee is on the mix- Kick it!” Then crowd went crazy, and Buckshot stole the stage with powerful performances of Black Moon oldies. Buck did “I Gotcha Opin (Remix)”, “How Many MCs” and “Buck ‘Em Down.”

Then the next performance was what everyone came for: the reunion of both lineups of the Crooklyn Dodgers. Jeru, Masta Ace, O.C. and Chubb Rock got on stage, and they went through a fantastic rendition of their titular song. Then they did the 95 sequel, and it was over.

I headed out and got to meet some of the cats who performed. I met Jeru and Wordsworth and basically just raved about how much I liked them. I met up with my brother and my cousin, and my cousin introduced me to DJ Premier. Which was amazing. I also spotted Torae hanging out around the back of the park, but I didn’t bug him. I caught Masta Ace on his way out as well and got a chance to talk to him. Dude brought his parents with him, which is pretty damn cool. Probably one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

Pictures and video coming soon.