A year later, the African Festival of the Arts came back to Chicago's South Side with a nice Old School hip-hop lineup. This year, I went on the last night and saw Naughty by Nature, EPMD, and Mr. Kurtis Blow. You get the "Mr." title if you can still move the crowd at age 48.

In a nutshell, NN was nice and Treach still raps with a scowl (like that kid at the Humbolt Puerto Rican festival - in the Events gallery). "The other guy" could still flow. When they came to the stage, they reminded themselves there were kids in the audience, and they'd keep the show PG-13. Then they proceeded to curse the rest of the show.

EPMD didn't care about the kids. Parrish came out and said form the start, "Excuse my language, but this is how I do hip-hop" They proceeded to drop F-bombs and the N-word at a rate that would make Redman proud. I was never a huge EPMD fan, but they did their thing. The DJ tried to show-out, but he wasn't spectacular. However, for his age, he held it down. They pointed out that this was the first time in a while "all three members of the group" had been together. Am I the only one who didn't know the DJ was a member? EPMD stands for "Eric and Parrish making dollars" (the DJ is not mentioned in there). I guess the DJ is a volunteer, since it doesn't say anything about him making dollars too.

Lastly, Mr. Kurtis Blow was amazing for a 48 year old. Still in shape, he rocked the old-school dances and could still get the crowd going. It didn't hurt that most of the crowd near the stage was getting blunted up during most of the show. Kurtis called for B-boys to help him with a song and 7-8 jumped the fence and break danced on stage for a $50 prize. During the battle, Kurtis got in the circle for some footwork and a few freezes. Mad props. Off-script, there was a tie for first and Kurtis offered them each $50. They agreed to a 3-on-3 winner-take-all crew battle. It was live and took up the rest of the time. Kurtis gave the winning crew cash from his pocket. Nice!