Hometown heroes Bone Thugs-n-Harmony played to a very enthusiastic crowd on Saturday night at the Agora Theater. Ostensibly a homecoming show, all five original members took to the stage for a 90-minute display of old school hip hop, Cleveland style. Back in August, the city of Cleveland bestowed a “Musical Key to the City,” honoring their successes and longevity in a rather fickle business.
Founded in 1991, the outfit has been eligible for Rock Hall induction for almost ten years now.
Several local openers played for an interminable amount of time leading up to Kottonmouth Kings, the California-founded rap rock outfit whose lyrics and style advocates as a cannabis-legalization front, a perfect bookend for Bone Thugs-n- Harmony. Offering a crazed, forty-five-minute set, the band left the stage and left the audience waiting for the hip hop headliners for more than an hour. As the crowd started getting restless, a few audible boos came from the back of the venue; the band finally took to the stage at about 11:30, almost seventy-five minutes after their scheduled start time, but 90 minutes of old-school hip-hop followed.
Here’s all the action we caught:
