This show will feature live graffiti art from artist James Top. For more information, click here. 

This celebration of 50 years of hip-hop is centered on the Native Tongues, a collective of like-minded artists that coalesced in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s around positive-minded Afrocentric lyrics, and innovative samples of jazz, funk, and soul music. Monie Love, Chi Ali, and Dres from Black Sheep each contributed albums to the canon at the turn of the decade: Love’s Down to Earth, which spawned the top 40 single “It’s a Shame (My Sister),” The Fabulous Chi Ali, which placed the titular MC in heavy rotation on “Yo! MTV Raps” and “Rap City,” and A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, which established Black Sheep as one of New York’s sharpest groups of MCs. NYC radio mainstay DJ Red Alert is on the 1s and 2s and Ralph McDaniels, the NYC institution and host of the long-running public television show “Video Music Box,” plays host.