Lady B party draws rapper legend to Philly

On Sunday, legendary rapper Big Daddy Kane will be in Philadelphia, performing with a lineup that includes Salt N Pepa, Biz Markie, Kool Moe D, and Force MDs.

But on Friday night, he'll be in the Czech Republic, at the Hip Hop Kemp Festival, as part of a lineup that includes Czech rappers Vladimir 518 and Ektor & DJ Wich.

That's lot of miles to cover. How you going to do that, Kane?

"Ask me on Sunday," the Grammy winner says, laughing.

He'd fly even farther to take part in the annual Lady B Basement Party Live at the Dell Music Center.

He owes a considerable debt to Lady B, the Philly radio mainstay and hip-hop pioneer.

"She is the person responsible for starting my career," he says on the phone from his home in North Carolina. "She broke me in Philadelphia. She played 'Raw' before I even got signed by Warner Bros."

The genre has come a long way since Kane broke in with the Juice Crew in 1986, playing block parties and rec centers in Queens and Brooklyn.

"Hip-hop is so commercial. It's basically part of pop culture now, to where the hip-hop artists who can afford to have lighting shows and explosions and big arena sets," he says. "That's the focal point of the show, which keeps the energy going and the crowd locked in. It's more of a visual thing and less a performance.

"Back in the beginning, it was two turntables and a mic. From [Grandmaster] Flash and the Furious Five down to the Cold Crush brothers, that was all they had to rock the crowd."

These days, Kane is enjoying Kendrick Lamar's call-out verse on Big Sean's "Control." (Lamar is also playing at the three-day Kemp Festival.)

Kane enjoys hearing a rapper like Lamar throw down the gauntlet to his fellow MCs.

"I haven't seen nobody do that since Roxanne Shante in the mid-80s," he says.

At the Dell, he promises a set of "classic material." As for who will headline, "We all in our 40s," he says. "We don't really care about that."