50th anniversary hip-hop concert is all about peace and love

Though the term hip-hop became associated with violence and gangsta rap in the 1980s and 1990s, the culture that started in a South Bronx basement in 1973 was really about turning youthful energy into peaceful creativity.

Fifty years on, hip-hop is embraced around the world. And, given the number of rappers that emerged from Long Island, there was no better place to celebrate hip-hop’s golden anniversary than the Hempstead High School auditorium last Friday night.

On the roster that night were hip-hop legends: Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien, Henry “Hen Dogg” Williams and Stoney Barshon “Ethiopian King” Gibbs, of the Sugarhill Gang, the group whose single “Rapper’s Delight” was the first hip-hop song to reach the Top 40; Melvin “Melle Mel” Glover and Eddie “Scorpio” Morris, of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, whose 1982 song “The Message” brought socio-political meaning into the art form; Sugarhill’s DJ, Tracy “DJ T Dynasty” Temple; Roxanne Shanté, who became a hip-hop phenomenon in 1984, at age 14, and her DJ, Vaughan “DJ Cool V” Lee, cousin of rapper Marcel Theo “Biz Markie” Hall; Def Jam rapper Keith Murray; Andre Levins, known professionally as A+, who grew up on Hempstead’s Terrace Avenue and became a rap star at age 14 in 1996; and Victor “DJ Vic Lover” Pratt, who is also a Hempstead school board trustee.

The night became a unifying party for the fans who filled the auditorium, from the police officials in attendance, to the school officials, to the political leaders, to the aficionados in the seats, for whom hip-hop is a call to the best that life has to offer.

The emcee was Jeffrey Spencer, a Hempstead firefighter who founded a charity organization called Helping Hands of Hempstead with his daughter, Cheyenne.

After remarks from local officials, the party began.

Roxanne prefaced her famous songs with a comedic routine about growing up in the 1970s and ’80s. “You had to be back in your house before what?” she shouted to the crowd.

“Before the streetlights came on!” the audience shouted back.

“And when you went outside with your bicycle, you knew, don’t let nobody —”

“Ride your bike!” the crowd belted out.

When A+ took the stage, he poured heart and soul into his best-known hits.

“This is the ark, right here,” he said. “In 1996, a kid my age, speaking about the stuff that he’d been through, and being able to express yourself with that art, and being able to make it out and do something positive — it’s a blessing to be on this stage.”

Amid the performances, citations were handed out. Among the most moving was the award for 81-year-old Carolyn Morant, of Roosevelt, the mother of Scott Monroe “La Rock” Sterling, a hip-hop pioneer who was felled by bullets while trying to calm a neighborhood dispute in the South Bronx in 1987.

Morant has been a leader of Boy Scout Troop 300 at St. George’s Episcopal Church, in Hempstead, for 22 years.

When the concert resumed, Keith Murray glided across the stage, dancing to his own tunes and words with endless energy.

Then the Sugarhill Gang bounded into the lights and launched into their pieces, with spotlights adding to the vitality crackling through their voices.

“We are the first commercially successful rap group, we are the first to go platinum, we are the first to be on ‘Soul Train,’ ‘American Bandstand,’ ‘Solid Gold,’” announced Master Gee, introducing Melle Mel and Scorpio. “But these are the brothers from the South Bronx that made it possible for me to do what I’m doing today.”

By the end of the night, everyone was swinging their arms over their heads, swaying to the rhythm and sidling out of their seats to enjoy their own fancy footwork.

“This ain’t just no normal night!” Melle Mel shouted. “This is the 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop! We ain’t up onstage cussin’, and we ain’t talkin’ crazy. We ain’t gonna shoot nobody. Nobody gonna get stabbed. So if we get that kind of hip-hop up here in Hempstead tonight, then everybody make some noise!

The crowd roared its approval.

“This is a wonderful, wonderful event,” Hempstead School Board President Lamont Johnson said. “I’m happy that the village and the school board were able to give our village residents, and other people that came, exactly what they deserve.”

“We feel like if the world has more love and good music,” Master Gee said, “it will be a whole lot better.”