These are the days in hip-hop that I miss.  The days when remarkable things occurred spontaneously with the music that left us speechless.

I still remember the first time this performance aired. Chappelle’s Show had just started to reach the mainstream and had us glued to our TV every week because we knew that everyone was going to be talking about the show the next day. As if the show wasn’t good enough in itself, it was always exciting to see what Dave had up his sleeve for the grand finale when he would roll out the musical guest for the week. Even when you knew who the musical guest was in advance, you never knew what they had cooked up for those raw performances that always brought us something unique compared to a standard television appearance.

I may be wrong about this, but I believe Common was originally announced as the musical guest of the week when this episode aired. This was at a time when Kanye West was just breaking through, having achieved success with his production and the College Dropout album, but was still quite an enigma to most mainstream audiences.

You could hear the excitement in Dave’s voice when he announced his guests for the week, as if he were a DJ about to drop an exclusive joint he knew we were going to love.

And love it we did. This performance reminds me of how simple hip-hop really is. This no-frills video with two great MCs and a DJ posted up in a kitchen delivering something remarkable that had the hip-hop world talking.

We need this sort of thing to happen again in hip-hop!