Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think anyone on this site talked about the Hip Hop Honors show from earlier in the week. I know that Money Mike was possibly not even going to be able to watch the show until later in the week. I wasn’t able to live blog it, but did get to catch most of it.
I love this concept, this show, and everything about why VH-1 does this show. You wonder why VH-1 does this and not say, MTV or BET, or even a network channel.
What happens when I watch this show (and previous years as well) is that I smile. I simply smile throughout the entire thing. It reminds me of when and why I fell in love with hip hop in the first place. We hip hop fans are a funny bunch. We dislike far more of the current music that hip hop artists produce today than we like. The music from our youth will always be better than what’s out now. But damnit, if you talk bad about the art that we love, get ready to defend your stance. For hours. We are a passionate bunch. We’ve had to sell people on the fact that being an emcee is just as much of a honed skill as anything else. You don’t think so? Try rapping. We’ve had to let those know that while Whitney Houston’s voice is a gift, so is Jay-Z’s flow. And we never feel as if anyone thinks our music is on an equal plane as rock music. All of those things come back to me when I watch this show. Every year.
The cool thing about this show is that it’s a show of acknowledgment. You can argue as to why certain people are honored earlier than others (I’m sure being able to show up with your crew intact is one of the reasons), but really, I don’t care. Hopefully, all the right folks will be honored eventually. This year, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Slick Rick, and Too Short were honored. As has been the case with the previous shows, to “honor” the hip hop legends, current and former hip hop stars come out and perform some of the honorees previous hits. And then the legends themselves get on stage. It was great to see Slick Rick on stage performing from his throne. Cypress Hill got the show started off with a bang and had a great live performance. And how did they get Naughty By Nature back together? I thought Treach and them didn’t get a long? But I was probably most excited to see De La’s performance, and I’ve included that below.
Hopefully VH-1 continues to run this show. For people like me and those who are much bigger fans of the culture and the music, it’s maybe the best thing that VH-1 has done or will ever do. Hopefully we’ll get Money Mike’s thoughts when he gets the chance to watch the show.
You can watch it online if you didn’t catch it on the tube at VH-1.com or check their schedule to see when they are showing it again.
