From A.B.C. to O.P.P.

Summer, why do I love thee...let me count the ways....

Here is a phase I never thought I would be able to utter..."I saw Naughty by Nature perform in an alley the other night....and LOVED it". Naughty by Nature performed at the Cans Festival a few weekends ago, and luckily this happened to occur the day after my birthday this year, so I was easily able to convince a group of friends that this would be the perfect way to celebrate the occasion. We hopped on our bikes and peddled down to Cans, and once we got within a mile radius of the bar, we could hear the beats bumping and the crowd cheering. We piled into the melee and began swaying to the beats along with maybe 500 other hipsters and yuppies sipping PBR tallboys and attempting to 'rap along'.

What a perfect 'venue'. Nestled in between two three flats, lucky (depending on your perspective) apartment dwellers sat in windows and dangled over back porches, watching over the mass of bodies undulating in front of the impromptu stage below. What really made the night for me was the multiple shout-outs to the late, great Michael Jackson. One of my favorite moments was when Treach screamed, "pump your fist in the air for MJ". As the crowd obliged, NbN broke into their first hit 'O.P.P.' who's beat sampled from the ever famous 'A.B.C.' by the Jackson 5.

I will leave you with a few quotes taken strait from my friends' mouths while at the concert...

As the show began, my one friend yelled 'lets see if we can get this whole crowed to perform the thriller dance, who knows the moves?!' quickly followed by him whispering 'man, I NEVER thought I would be at a Naughty by Nature concert...mostly because my mother refused to let me listen to them when they were popular in the early 90's'.....I would say these two quotes set the mood of the evening perfectly. As the night progressed, and the crowd responds to a 'you down with O.P.P?!' line, another friend leans over and says, 'I used to love this song, but I recently googled 'OPP' to find out what it means, turns out I am not so down with it!' To which I could only respond, 'to each his own' while keeping in beat to the music.