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OAKLAND — Rap is back. After a yearlong moratorium, rap music returned to the Oakland stage Saturday night as 3,000 fans packed the Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium for a show featuring rappers
Too Short and Ice Cube. The concert--with unusually tight security--was the first since violence at earlier shows prompted the moratorium. Aside from a few shoving matches, the event was
peaceful. Oakland ranks with New York City as the nation’s hotbed of rap, spawning Too Short, superstar MC Hammer and the group Digital Underground. The city’s last rap concert, on the same
stage, ended in violence when fights among several rival gangs broke out during a December, 1989, show by the controversial rappers 2 Live Crew. It was the last in a series of violence at
rap shows, including a wild, chair-throwing fracas at the Oakland Coliseum that left one person with a gunshot wound. As a result, the auditorium and the Coliseum both imposed a yearlong
moratorium on all rap concerts. The Coliseum has yet to book another rap show. Too Short, whose biting and sometimes raunchy lyrics stirred the audience Saturday, repeatedly reminded his
fans to keep it cool. Concert promoter Bill Graham said he increased his usually tight security by about a third, and the auditorium came up with a security plan designed just for the show.
A police helicopter hovered overhead, lighting the parking lot with a bright beam. Barricades circled the parking lot and fans were ushered through a maze of metal gates leading to the
auditorium entrance where they were patted down and scanned with a metal detector. At the end of the show, the crowd was herded out by a line of police officers and security personnel. MORE
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