2007 Rock The Bells Review

This was the first year I was able to attend Rock The Bells since I've wanted to go starting in about 2004. RTB is a festival hailed as the premiere hip-hop event of the year, but I think this year you wouldn't have been able to tell that by looking at the crowd. I'll go ahead and make the assumption that at previous installments of this concert you would have seen cyphers, b-boy circles, and everyone in the crowd would be mesmerized almost all day. This however, was not the case at the 2007 RTB.

See, this year Rage Against The Machine (a popular uber-liberal rock band) headlined the festival along with the Wu-Tang Clan, and it was sort of a big deal to fans of RATM considering they seem to be just getting back together for performances. That having been said, most of the crowd (I'll say at least 65%) came to see RATM and seemed impartial, if not entirely uninterested, in all the hip-hop that was playing for the rest of the day. Yes, they got hype when Cypress Hill, Wu-Tang and I daresay even a little so when Public Enemy hit the stage; but it just doesn't feel like a hip-hop festival when Nas gets on stage with The Roots and nobody really seems to notice.

Now, I don't have a problem with rock or it's fans, but when most of the crowd of the consists of such, it takes away the essence of the festival that made it the "genuine rite of passage for thousands of core, social, conscious, and independent Hip Hop enthusiasts, backpackers, and heads." Therein lies my problem with RTB, it was a damn good festival, but it wasn't really a hip-hop festival, more like "Rage Against The Machine and hip-hop friends".

That being said, most of the sets were dope anyways. I managed to be within 100 feet of the stage during Immortal Tech (pretty good), Pharoahe Monch (live and soulful) and half of EPMD (just boring) and relatively close during the rest. Public Enemy rocked the house and showed up with more energy than almost all the other emcees that were way younger than themselves. Talib Kweli and Mos Def held it down but didn't really have too much enthusiasm. Murs got a slot on the main stage when Mos Def came late as fuck, and did his thing considering how impromptu it really was.

However, it brings to mind another slight downfall of RTB, and that is how unorganized and crowded it was, or seemed at least. Lines were long as FUCK (an HOUR to get food? Come on.) and sets weren't on time or were pretty much skipped entirely (like Nas, of all people -_-) and for the life of me I only saw ONE Paid Dues stage, not two.

In the end, it was a great festival, I just wish that next year it sticks to it's roots as a Hip-Hop festival, no matter how much more money a set by RATM might bring the promoters. With better organization, this festival would have been everything my high-as-fuck expectations imagined.