
I hit up
VH1's Hip Hop Honors last night at
Hammerstein Ballroom here in New York. Legends
Cypress Hill,
Slick Rick,
Naughty by Nature, and
De la Soul were honored, with a special tribute to Isaac Hayes. We're giving you more pics and the real rundown of the event, firsthand after the jump!



So we got invited by VH1's casting to be in the audience for this year's Hip Hop Honors. We were originally going to try to get on the press list, but figured, "What the hell?", going as fans would probably be a better experience. We were right.

I hit up the event with the fellow NY bloggers,
Lexie and
Starr and some other homies,
Monee, and
Christina. (Yes, shout outs are in order. lol) We were told to get there by 4pm, but I was moving, so was incredibly (almost 2 hrs) late. Clearly, it didn't matter anyway. Shortly after we got there,
Biz Markie got on the 1s and 2s in order to hype up the audience. Ehhh...he didn't do such a good job. I'm a big fan of Biz, and think that he's a legend, but he did not get the party started. He barely played any hype songs, and the crowd looked pretty bored. It would have been nice if it would have been a party atmosphere, such as I heard it was last year, especially since we had to wait around so long for the show to start.
Anywhoo... I'll skip all the boring details about what happened before the show started. However, if you'd like to hear about them, just
follow me on twitter. I gave a play by play as everything was going down.
Tracey Morgan opened up the show by walking through the crowd with the "assistants" from "
I Want to Work for Diddy". His opening was pretty funny.

I don't want to give away too much of the show, because it hasn't aired yet, but I will say that
Cypress Hill was probably my favorite tribute, and I'm not even a big fan of theirs like that. I loved their set design, the dancers repping Cali in khakis and chucks, and I feel that they had the best tribute.

Of course the eye candy during their tribute provided by
Travis from
Gym Class Heroes didn't hurt either. *Swoon*!
The show was cool, but being there wasn't necessarily as hype as I thought it was going to be. However, it was funny, because a lot of celebs and "VIPs" ended up coming down to the ground level so they could really enjoy the show. In the audience, we spotted
Questlove from The Roots,
Fab 5 Freddy, The
Retro Kidz and more. The performances did not disappoint either, as they had some really great appearances by
Q-tip, Public Enemy,
Kid Rock,
Estelle,
Cee-Lo,
Jim Jones,
Mos Def, etc. My only real disappointment was the fact that
Slick Rick only performed one song, and that's who I really wanted to see.
All in all, I say its still definitely worth tuning into. All of the performers were pretty good, the set design was fabulous, and Tracy Morgan's skits were pretty good as well.
VH1's Hip Hop honors airs October 6th, 2008 @ 10/9 c.