Corbin Arena announces ‘West Fest’ show for Sat., Sept. 10

The Corbin Arena opened up the week with a bang Monday, announcing via its official Facebook page that rap legends Ice Cube, Cyprus Hill and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony will be in town for a show they are dubbing “West Fest” on Saturday, Sept. 10.

Arena Manager Kristina Balla said that the initial reaction to the show announcement has been overwhelmingly positive, further proving to her that there is definitely a market for rap and hip-hop in this area.

“We’ve had a really amazing response,” Balla said. “When I first started in this job, a lot of people said that only country and Christian music would work here, but we have tried to bring in an eclectic mix of acts. I feel like we really hit our stride when Nelly came, but even that was kind of a rap-country crossover.”

“Once we were able to announce Snoop Dogg, though, and we saw how quickly that show sold out, we knew that we had a market here for those acts. I feel like we’ve made a lot of good impressions, and have developed a really good reputation with the management firms of these artists. It’s just been great to see the community get so excited about these shows.”

Tickets for West Fest will be available for presale on Wednesday, July 13 at 10 a.m. using the passcode WESTFEST22. The on-sale date to the general public will be Friday, July 15 at 10 a.m. Tickets will be available at the Corbin Arena box office, or online at ticketmaster.com.

About the artists:

Ice Cube is an American rapper, actor, and filmmaker. His lyrics on N.W.A’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton contributed to gangsta rap’s widespread popularity, and his political rap solo albums AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (1990), Death Certificate (1991), and The Predator (1992) were critically and commercially successful. He has also had an active film career since the early 1990s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of N.W.A in 2016.

A native of Los Angeles, Jackson formed his first rap group called C.I.A. in 1986. In 1987, with Eazy-E and Dr. Dre, he formed the pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A. As its lead rapper, he wrote some of Dre’s and most of Eazy’s lyrics on Straight Outta Compton, a landmark album that shaped West Coast hip hop’s early identity and helped differentiate it from East Coast rap. N.W.A was also known for their violent lyrics, threatening to attack abusive police and innocent civilians alike, which stirred controversy. After a monetary dispute over the group’s management by Eazy-E and Jerry Heller, Cube left N.W.A in late 1989, teaming with New York artists and launching a solo rap career.

Ice Cube entered cinema by playing Doughboy in director John Singleton’s feature debut Boyz n the Hood, a 1991 drama named after a 1987 rap song that Ice Cube wrote. Ice Cube also cowrote and starred in the 1995 comedy film Friday; it premised a successful franchise and reshaped his persona into a bankable movie star. His directorial debut was the 1998 film The Players Club. As of 2020, he has appeared in about 40 films, including the 1999 war comedy Three Kings, family comedies like the Barbershop series, and buddy cop comedies 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, and Ride Along. He was an executive producer of many of these films, as well as of the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

Cypress Hill is an American hip hop group from South Gate, California. They are a hip-hop group that has sold multi-platinum and platinum albums, having sold over 20 million albums worldwide. They are considered to be among the main progenitors of West Coast and 1990s hip hop. The group has been critically acclaimed for their first five albums. All of the group members advocate for medical and recreational use of cannabis in the United States. In 2019, Cypress Hill became the first hip hop group to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Bone Thugs N Harmony was signed to Ruthless Records in late 1993, when they debuted with their EP Creepin on ah Come Up. The EP included their breakout hit single “Thuggish Ruggish Bone”. In 1995, the group released its second album E. 1999 Eternal, which included hits “1st of tha Month” and “East 1999”. Their hit song “Tha Crossroads”, a tribute to then-recently deceased Eazy-E, won a Grammy Award in 1997.

In 2000, BTNHResurrection reached platinum in one month, while 2002’s Thug World Order received more moderate sales and promotion, going gold and peaking at No. 3 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. After that album, the group went on hiatus from their label and released their sixth studio album, Thug Stories, independently in 2006. In 2007 they had another major-label release, Strength & Loyalty, on Swizz Beatz’s label Full Surface Records. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony “officially” returned with their 2010 album Uni5: The World’s Enemy, released by their own record label, BTNH Worldwide, with distribution by Warner Bros.

The group is regarded as one of the greatest hip hop acts of all time. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony is the only group that has worked with 2Pac, the Notorious B.I.G., Eazy-E, and Big Pun while they were all still alive. About.com ranked them No. 12 on its list of the 25 Best Rap Groups of All Time, and MTV called them “the most melodic hip-hop group of all time.”