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The 2018 concert season at Shoreline Amphitheatre came to a close on Saturday, Oct. 13, with a big hip-hop party.
It was a packed house at the Mountain View venue to watch such icons of the genre as Ice Cube, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Too Short and Warren G rap down Memory Lane.
It just goes to show the power of the package tour.
Ice Cube, the evening’s headliner, probably has a hard time selling out a 2,500-capacity theater in the Bay Area if he’s touring on his own. And the other acts on the bill certainly don’t come close to matching Cube’s draw.
Yet, stick them all on the same bill and all of sudden we’re talking about big business at the 22,000-capacity Shoreline.
The lively crowd had a good time throughout the concert, singing along with the lyrics to songs that many of these fans first fell in love with way back in the ’80s and ’90s.
The best act I saw during the five-hour-plus show was Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the Cleveland gangsta-rap outfit that signed with Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records in 1993.
Bone is certainly one of the greatest vocal groups in hip-hop history, especially if one is making that assessment based strictly on the quality of the voices represented. So, it was a treat to hear the five band members — Bizzy Bone, Wish Bone, Layzie Bone, Krayzie Bone and Flesh-n-Bone — blend their voices in often-amazing fashion on such songs as “1st of tha Month” (from the sophomore release “E. 1999 Eternal”).
The group also used its time onstage to pay tribute to three of the hip-hop genre’s true greats, individually spotlighting Eazy-E, 2pac and the Notorious B.I.G.in both song and on the big screen at the back of the stage.
Ice Cube had a somewhat hard time following Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. His performance felt a bit anticlimactic after the vocal fireworks on display in the previous set.
Yet, Cube did bring his A-game, filling his songs with his signature blend of edge, attitude and pure power. He opened the show with a great version of “Natural Born Killaz,” which some incorrectly assume hails from director Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” but rather can be found on the soundtrack to the film “Murder Was the Case.”
One of the best moments of the entire show was when Ice Cube reached back to his N.W.A days and performed three fierce cuts from the band’s legendary game-changer “Straight Outta Compton” — the title track, “Gangsta Gangsta” and “(Expletive) tha Police.”
The rapper followed up the “Police” offering with what he called a “public service announcement,” basically telling fans not to take the advice of the N.W.A. anthem “(Expletive) tha Police” to heart. He didn’t want to see any of his fans end up in handcuffs on this night.
“Don’t go (expletive) with the police because Ice Cube did a song,” he said. “They will arrest your ass — or worse.”
Oakland talent Too Short appeared earlier in the night, performing a number of raunchy sex raps and uttering the B-word more times in 30 minutes than I’ll (hopefully) hear the rest of the year.
Warren G also took the stage, delivering a mostly lackluster and uneven set of music that thankfully ended on a high note with his signature song, “Regulate.”
