Anybody who attended last Sunday’s Art and Soul Festival, in Oakland’s Downtown, will remember this scene: MC Curry is prancing around on stage, and the audience is in a state of euphoria. Balloons are floating, children running; young women and flaunting, young brothers are flossing.

“This weather…so unpredictable! So wonderful…” Curry is going on, as he introduced PopLyfe. He will bring on Club Nouveau, Tony!Toni!Tone! En Vougue and Sheila E that afternoon.

 “ We are happy to be in Oakland! The City that was the birth of the great musical legends like Sly and Family Stone—“

After a riffy   imitation of Sly’s song, He ad-libbed, “Let us go back in musical history, briefly. There was Sly! Nobody ever sing like Sly. We were the first to have that! Right here in Oakland….”

As he rapped, I took out my iphone 4 and videoed him in HD.  As I moved closer down the aisle of hundreds of people towards the stage, I kept my camera on Curry.

“. They had a band…in fact, that brother who is walking toward me now…”

He was referring to me, but I kept my camera focused on him, as I came closer to him.

“…He was in Sly’s band. He is still wearing the same outfit he had on in 1989.”

They laughed. I felt the sting. Why didn’t Curry recognize?  What the audience didn’t know was that I was scheduled to interview Curry backstage. We had met when he hosted the Oscar Grant verdict, and had talked a few times on the phone. I told him I would come down and here I was and he’s telling jokes on me.

“…He was the first man to record with a tape recorder.” He was referring to my video cell phone camera on IPhone 4.

“…How you doing, sir!”

I didn’t look away, but kept videoing.

“…Maybe he didn’t hear me/’ Sir? Sir?’

I kept moving to him and holding up my IPhone 4

“…Sir…”

I kept moving in.

“…Sir.”

I moved closer to him.

“…Sir, He looks like he was on a cruise…with that shirt.”

He wasn’t that far off. My brother in law had been on a cruise and when I was visiting down in North Carolina, he gave me a couple of his shirts. I was wearing one of them.

“…He’s going on a Hawaiian cruise!”

I was laughing too now.

“”I bet he knows my daddy! Sir.”

At the end if the skit, we laughed.  What the audience couldn’t know was that I had been talking on the phone with Curry. I was to interview him and was going to talk bout some projects for films.

So to let him know that I had come to see him and who I was, I took off my cap so that he could see my face.

“…And he needs a hair cut!”

Curry proved to be a wonderful comedian that day.

He was especially good when he went down into the audience and played silly games with them. Everybody knows from his “Hanging with Mr. Cooper” that he lived in Oakland. So what kind of jobs did he have? As he rattled off the name of the drugstores and the Sears jobs, the audience howled with recognition. There was always somebody who remembered working with him or knew somebody who worked with him then, he went to highs school. Who knew him then? Everybody knew somebody who he knew him.

He said, “I want to find somebody under the age who can sing?” The jokes came when he put the mic in front of a thirty-year-old woman and said, “You are not a baby!”

Another dig was his references the all-pervasive hair weaves that glistened in the hot sun. He relished signifying on the sister’s hairpieces.

“…Excuse me, but your weave is so beautiful! No not your weave!’” He points to an imaginary woman. “…Not your weave, but her weave!”

He had a way to keep us laughing at ourselves.

He ingeniously wove his comedy around En Vogue, and an appearance by Lenny Williams. At one point, he announced Too Short.  A few minutes later, Too Short appeared on the stage, hopping on a pair of crutches.

And asked them, “What’s my favorite word?”

The audience yelled back the b-word.

When I went backstage to see him, Curry looked at me and exclaimed. “My God, Cecil, I swear I didn’t know that was you!”

“Yeah, you said I knew your father. But it wasn’t our father I knew!”

We played the dozens to great camaraderie and friendship.

Then he showed me the palms of his hands, where he had written my name.

“That’s so I can’t forget it man, I’m going to announce you!”

So as I waited, I saw Too Short hobbling along on crutches. I reminded him of our previous interviews, dating back in the 90s.

“Yeah, he said, “ I remember. How you doing?”

“Are you going to perform?”

Then Too Short took his crutches and skillfully used them to disappear among the musical instruments.

So now I asked him how he’s doing, if he had broken his toe because he had to kick somebody in the ass.

“Naw, man. I don’t do that.” He was laughing at that joke, and I could see that he had indeed become older and more mature.

“So what’s so special for you about this festival? “ I asked him.

“It’s just the best event we have. For me, it’s like a homecoming, or a family reunion. That’s what it feels like.” He looked around at the white tents that had been set up everywhere. The billowing white sheets and the spiral tips gave the whole backstage area an exotic feeling. Too short was picking up on that too. “It feels like a home coming…”

“Did you see your other homebody, Hammer?”

“No, I missed him. I was supposed to come to both days, but I missed yesterday. I wanted to see Hammer, too!””

So are you living back in Oakland now?”

“Yes, Oakland is my home now.”