Hip-Hop History Lessons From Rock The Bells

Nas will be performing the classic "Illmatic" at Rock The Bells this year... just not in Seattle.

Confidential to the Rock The Bells organizers: Why isn't Seattle one of the West Coast stops for this festival?

Seattle loves hip-hop. Our city's got tons of hip-hop. NPR even wrote about our hip-hop scene - which means that it's, like, a thing now. C'mon, Seattle isn't even one of the stops of the club tour. Please spread the love to our city next year. I promise it will be totally worth it.

To the uninitiated: Rock The Bells started in Southern California in 2004 and has grown so much that they've started taking the party on the road. And to make the festival even more exciting, last year organizers introduced a new element: having headliners perform their "classic" albums in their entirety. Apparently it was a hit because they are teaming up with Reebok to do the same thing again this year.

This year's lineup is impressive, to say the least. Headliners performing their classic albums include: Ms. Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Nas' ( performing with AZ, DJ Premier, and Pete Rock!) Illmatic, Erykah Badu's Baduizm, Cypress Hill's Black Sunday, Common's Be, Raekwon's (performing with Ghostface Killah!) Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Mobb Deep's The Infamous, GZA's Liquid Swords, Mos Def & Talib Kweli's Black Star (zOMG!), and more.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The above list doesn't even include the equally impressive lineup of up-and-coming artists who will also be performing, just not a whole "classic" album. Those artists include Freddie Gibbs, Childish Gambino, and Seattle's own Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

Just so you don't feel like you are totally missing out, Reebok Classics partnered with Rock The Bells to produce a series of short-films with festival headliners discussing the story behind their classic albums. The film series starts with Nas talking about his 1994 debut album Illmatic. Nas talks candidly about his relationship with A Tribe Called Quest's frontman, Q-Tip and what it was like working with DJ Premier. And two more shorts are already up and ready for viewing: Cypress Hill on 1993's influential Black Sunday and Lauryn Hill talking about 1998's massively popular The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Look for more of these short films in the upcoming weeks.

Rock The Bells is happening right now. The festival kicked off this past Saturday in Los Angeles and is continuing this weekend in San Francisco before heading to New York and Boston.

Look for our coverage of the San Francisco leg of the fest sometime in the upcoming weeks.