The lyric-spouting, Mountain Dew-guzzling, street-surfing Busta is a perfect ambassador for this collision of worlds. Along with four stages worth of A-list hip hop, rock, and alternative acts (OutKast, Stone Temple Pilots, Snoop Dogg, Fatboy Slim, Ice-T, Third Eye Blind, Ludacris), there's a tent for rave music, a skateboarding competition featuring Tony Hawk, snowboarding and ski-jumping exhibitions, a pro paintball tournament, a freestyle motocross competition, a B-boying and deejaying battle, and a graffiti expo.
But this wet dream for the attention-deficit-disorder generation does have a few kinks. Method Man is a no-show, and the daily turnout of several thousand falls way below the organizers' expectations. Still, the cultural cross-pollination taking place all around is priceless: Hip hop heads stare in wonder at the moto-X riders jumping their dirt bikes off a 50-foot dirt hill; white kids pack the hip hop tent for the B-boy competition. Inside the rave tent, the beats pound tranced-out dancers from all walks of life. Nearby, a mesmerized throng watches a group of graffiti artists spraying their way down a long wall.
Amid all this talent, hip hop's finest pull some of the festival's biggest crowds. On day two, Ludacris offers an exuberant performance of his hits and remixes, from "What's Your Fantasy" to his verse on Missy's "One Minute Man." When people start throwing blunts on the stage, he admonishes, "This better be some good shit! We got weed inspectors backstage." Round midnight in the hip hop tent, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick have the crowd chant-ing every word of their famous duets "La Di Da Di" and "The Show." Afterward, Rick-sporting pink pants, a loud Hawaiian shirt, and a diamond-studded eye patch-has a girl come out carrying five giant gold rope chains on a platter. Donning them all and starting to dance, he says, "Now this is America circa 1987. Mad ignorant, right? Do the wop, y'all."
Leading off day three, Ice-T tells a 19-year-old girl in the front row that he's "not R. Kelly, but we can still get down." Little boys oblivious to his pimp posturing play with toy trucks in the grass while their parents sun themselves. After Ice runs through timeless hits like "High Rollers," "Colors," and "I'm Your Pusher," Snoop takes the stage, pimping his way through "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang," "Aint No Fun (If the Homies Cant Have None)," and other classics. It's the biggest ganja session of the festival, and across the crowd, people intermittently tilt their heads back and shoot puffs of smoke upward, like whales spouting air out of their blowholes. Snoop also beats his predecessors for getting the most girls in the front row to show their breasts. "We got hos, we got hos, we-e-e got hos," he jokes to the tune of Rossini's "Figaro, Figaro, Figaro."
