De La Soul's Posdnuos live at the Cornerstone 60 release party, 05.25.2004
Photo: Tim Moore/The Industry Cosign

NEW YORK — When was the last time you saw 35-year-old men and women jump up and down like Kris Kross? When was the last time you saw jaded music-industry folk thrust their arms up and down like high school kids at a prom afterparty? And when was the last time De La Soul, Brand Nubian, Black Sheep, Black Moon and Smif-N-Wessun performed together? On Tuesday night, all three occurred at club LQ as Cornerstone Promotions celebrated its 60th mixtape.

The Cornerstone mixtapes, which come out every month, have been a hit in the music industry, as DJs from Whoo Kid to Green Lantern have hosted the CDs (the discs act as a promotional tool for artists and various companies, including Sprite). The party was promoted as a heavyweight industry shindig with members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Talib Kweli, Lil' Kim, Kanye West and the Roots among those supposedly on the guest list, but by midnight the only A-list artists who had showed were Maxwell, Nas and his bride-to-be, Kelis.

That was cool, though. DJ Clark Kent kept people on the dance floor, playing selections from the golden hip-hop era of 1994-96, and unbeknownst to many of the party attendees, many more MCs would be coming through, not just to schmooze, but to rap.

The Cocoa Brovaz, the duo still affectionately called by their former moniker, Smif-N-Wessun, started out the night of "surprise" performances (some members of the press were tipped off about the roster of acts that would take the stage).

Once the bass line from "Sound Bwoy Bureill" dropped, some men started yelling, "Bo, bo, bo," as they made the symbol for a gun with their fingers and raised their arms to the air.

	Cornerstone 60 release party photos

"You can't test the champi-unnn sound/ You gettin' bucked down, recognize my Boot Camp Clik outta Bucktown," the crowd chanted along with the duo as they performed their hip-hop/dancehall hybrid. "We got a special guest," the group's Tek informed the crowd as the horns from Black Moon's "I Got Cha Opin" remix started to play. Then Black Moon frontman Buckshot came out and started firing off his classic quotables from the song.

"Me and my crew walk the streets at night like looking for the right one, bay-bay/ If it's payday I'm at your doorstep ..." rapped the gravelly voiced MC, who wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with Frank Sinatra's 1938 mug shot.

Buck followed up with "How Many Emcees?" then walked off the stage. Buck quickly returned as the beat for his group's debut record, "Who Got Da Props?," started.

"This is my first song," he told the crowd. "I wanna take y'all back."

"Put up, what up, BO BO BO!" he spewed with ferocity, making the crowd jump up and down. Some of the old-schoolers in the crowd even took their dancing way back, doing the famous project stomp.

After Buckshot and his Boot Camp Clik made their way offstage, the night's emcee, DJ Tony Touch, told everyone to keep their eyes on the stage. C.L. Smooth (his partner Pete Rock was DJing at another gig in New York) then entered and tried to catch wreck, but he had some temporary mic problems and had to leave the stage. When he returned, C.L. made sure his final exit would be on a high note, as he performed "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" for the finale of his brief set.

Then it was on.

Brand Nubian came out for their set of timeless joints, starting off with fire, "All for One." Save for the wrinkles on the face of the still-fresh-to-death Grand Puba, and Lord Jamar shearing off his signature dreads for a Caesar haircut, the Nubes looked almost exactly as they did back in the early '90s when they had New York on lock like the G-Unit and D-Block do now.

Puba, who was known as one of the flyest b-boys in his heyday, still had his smooth swagger as he set off the first verse with famous lines like, "I gets headaches from the wack/ So then I take a Bufferin and I max."

The Grand Man was given time to shine on his own, with his biggest solo song ever, "360." No one could stop dancing when they heard the Gladys Knight sample of "what goes around come back around again."

"Now big up to my Brooklyn mob," Puba rapped before being answered back with the fervent crowd response of "Brooklyn! Brooklyn!" "Big up to my Uptown mob," he continued, and was again answered by the crowd, this time with "Uptown! Uptown!"

Puba's crew got a chance to rock on their own as well. The second his record was over, the beat dropped for Sadat and Jamar's tag-team effort, "Punks Jump Up to Get the Beat Down." The record could've been renamed "The Crowd Jumps Up to Get the Beat Down," as people's feet started to leave the ground once X and the former star of "Oz" started rapping.

After Brand Nubian, De La Soul came out, but their set seemed too short like Todd Shaw, because after performing verses from "Buddy" and "Oooh," they brought out one of their Native Tongues crew brethren, Dres of Black Sheep. Dressed in a sweater vest and short-sleeved button-up, Dres did his own stirring of the pot with Black Sheep's two big hits, "Flavor of the Month" and "The Choice Is Yours." On the latter, he had even more people jumping with the famous sing-along lyrics, "Engine, engine number nine/ On the New York transit line/ If the train jumps off the track, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!"

Maybe some of these groups can pick up where their careers tapered off during their peaks. The Boot Camp Clik have a DVD and mixtape out now, Brand Nubian have a new LP scheduled for August and Black Sheep are due to put out another LP this fall.

For more sights and stories from concerts around the country, check out MTV News Tour Reports.

• De La Soul
• Brand Nubian
• Black Moon
• Black Sheep
• Cocoa Brovaz

Nas at his video shoot
Photo: Rahman Dukes

For his new single and video, "Made You Look," Nas has once again taken it to the streets.

"We went out to the five boroughs," he said Tuesday night of the video shoot with director Benny Boom, who captured the rapper performing all around New York. "We couldn't get permits, so we went guerilla-style. That's the way it's supposed to be. I see videos and like my man Tracy Morgan said, 'Every video I see, there's a girl, a model, dancing.' What the f--- is that? When you see me, you see the truth." (Click here for photos from the video shoot)

"We took it back to '88," said Boom, who's also directed such videos as Nelly and Kelly Rowland's "Dilemma" (see "Kelly Rowland Moves Into 'Leave It To Beaver' House"). "We wanted to take it back the old Rakim days when you did a video and made it performance and made it hot and showed love to the streets. ... [We] brought Nas to all the neighborhoods and everybody showed love to him. I wanted to give it that whole king of New York aspect of Nas. On the streets he's the king of New York of this rap thing."

"In Queensbridge we showed sections of the bridge," he added. "We had his Bravehearts out there. In the Bronx we had Fat Joe and all his people came and showed love. They came 25 deep in front of the Big Pun mural. We went to Harlem at Rucker Park and we had the ballplayers out there. We went to BK on Fulton and St. James, Fulton and Putnam, to Big's old stomping grounds, and everybody out there gave us crazy love."

Jadakiss, DJ Kay Slay, Killah Priest, Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar also showed their adoration for Nas by making cameos in the video.

"No R&B, straight hip-hop," Nas said on the mic, standing on a small stage in the basement of a Manhattan restaurant, before cameras started rolling. For the video's last scenes to go in the can, a fake club had been set up and Nas and the Bravehearts were the center of attention during a live performance.

"We just wanted to make sure people heard him," Boom said of his choice to shun the usual video process of lip-syncing. "If we wanted the feel of a live show, I was gonna give them a live show. Throw that mic on. Let him rip."

"The record is crazy," Boom later gushed. "I'm a old-school n---a. So for me, that's that 'Straight Outta Compton' [feel]. The sample and that loop is straight from the late '80s, early '90s of when they was introducing hip-hop."

The current state of hip-hop and a certain rhyme foe were at the forefront of Nas' thoughts during a lull in the action. "It's the fourth quarter and everybody has an R&B record, and they say they're hip-hop," he protested. "They just lying, sellin' out hip-hop music with R&B records. You're on your eighth album? Where's your balls at, man? Make a rap record. What, is you scared? Make some rap music. Hip-hop is not about radio, it's not about the TV. These n---as is too [MC] Hammer. This sh-- is real music from real life."

Nas' next dose of reality, God's Son, has been pushed back to December 17. Many of the tracks were recorded from late September to mid-October in Miami while Ja Rule (who co-stars with Nas in the video for "The Pledge" remix) was also down at the studio working on The Last Temptation.

According to Nas' spokesperson, God's Son is still being recorded with "Made You Look" soundscape provider Salaam Remi, Large Professor and the Alchemist contributing most of the beats. No lyrical guests have made it on the LP as of yet.

• Nas
• Kelly Rowland
• Jadakiss
• Brand Nubian
• Killah Priest

The recently-reformed rap outfit Brand Nubian are getting into the spirit of the holiday with a string of charitable acts geared towards helping underprivileged children.

In March of next year, the group will launch the Brand Nubian Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to "give back to the urban community." The organization plans to stage a number of activities geared towards youth, including week-long summer camps in cities across the U.S.

Closer to the holidays, the group is joining Bad Boy Records, Arista Records, Daddy's House, Epic Records, and a host of other organizations in supporting "Love Is...," a two-hour holiday party for underprivileged children in New York. The event, set for Saturday at New York's Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, will follow a Christmas play being staged by the children and will feature presents, a holiday meal, and a performance by Binky the Clown.

Brand Nubian have donated a number of goods to the party, including 100 autographed pictures.

• Brand Nubian

After its original line-up disbanded in 1991 following a hit song, "Slow Down," which sampled Edie Brickell's folk-tinged "What I Am," Brand Nubian has returned with a new album, "Foundation," which arrived in stores this week and reunites members Grand Puba, Lord Jamar, Sadat X and DJ Alamo.

Known for its socially-conscious lyrics and innovative production techniques, the Nubians are joined on "Foundation" by several contemporary rappers paying tribute to their forerunners, including Gang Starr's DJ Premier, Busta Rhymes and Lord Finesse.

"It's not just me [being] preachy preach through the whole album," Nubian Grand Puba told MTV News,

Brand Nubian has just released the first single off of "Foundation," for a song entitled "Don't Let It Go To Your Head," and the band is currently mulling plans for a fall tour.

• Brand Nubian

The original members of seminal hip-hop group Brand Nubian have reformed for a new album, "Foundation," which is set for release on September 21.

• Brand Nubian