If you’re not doing anything this weekend, you might want to check out the three day festival poppin’ off at the Jazz & Rib Fest in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio. It will feature dancing by the Philadelphia group. They will be showing and teaching dance routines to the youth — which is pretty ideal, since these past years dancing has been a huge part of the hip hop industry. The event will take place on W. Long Street located just past the North Bank Park pavilion. If you won’t be able to attend this particular hip hop festival, you may be able to catch them near your hometown. It will continue touring across the country with the Sunny D Summer 4Ever Road Trip. The purpose of this tour is for entertainment and to promote health and exercise.

Some of the dances you will find there include poppin and lockin and break dancing. If you aren’t familiar with the dance group, you may have seen them on the 106 & Park’s Wild Out Wednesday dance competitions back in 2006. You can call that episode their lucky break because since then they have been quite busy dancing all over the place. This event sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun, so it’s definitely something you should try to get to. It’s a family event — kids, adults and teens can all enjoy this hip hop festival. You can check in your area to see if and when they will be coming to a town near you.

If you missed the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival over the past weekend (June 20th), you missed a good time filled with various performances from many top artists. Besides the hip hop entertainment, there was lots of family fun. People of all ages showed up for the event even though their were off-and-on rain showers throughout the day. Starting off the show was Smif-N-Wessun with hit songs, like “Sound Bwoy Bureill”, “I Love You (Remix)” and “Bucktown”. Also performing were Buckshot, singing “How Many MCs”, followed by Brand Nubian with “Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down”, “Slow Down” and “All for One”; then J. Period even got on stage with the group to perform “Brooklyn Dodgers 2″.

Showing up as a surprise guest, Black Thought performed his own rendition of “Brooklyn Go Hard”. DJing the event, DJ Premiere, spun off popular hits like “Dwyck” and “Nas is Like”. Even Styles P and Sheek Louch (from the Lox) showed up, rapping hot verses from “Locked Up”, “We Gone Make It” and Sheek’s “Mighty D Block”. No, the whole event wasn’t based on old hip hop songs because Dead Prez came out with some tracks from their new CD, “Pulse of the People” — including “It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop”, which wrapped up the show. Their album was released on June 23rd. Closing the night of hip hop festivities was Pharoahe Monch with “Oh No” and “Simon Says”.

Overall, the event was great for couples, families and children that hold a special place in their heart and ears for hip hop.