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Guerilla Union has announced two festivals to be held at the NOS Events Center in San Bernadino, the birthplace of Rock The Bells Festival – Cypress Hill’s Smokeout 2012, happening on March 3, and Rock The Bells spinoff Paid Dues Festival 2012 on April 7. Tickets are on sale for both right now.

Cypress Hill’s latest installment of the Smokeout festival will continue its genre-spanning format, now featuring Long Beach legends Sublime (now known as Sublime with Rome with the addition of Rome Ramirez) as the main event. Cypress Hill, Thievery Corporation and Korn round out the headliners, while Wiz Khalifa, Curren$y, and Low End Theory are a part of the festival’s hip-hop offerings.

As for Paid Dues, if you like your rap concerts with a mob on stage, then this is your festival. Wu-Tang Clan, the original crew-as-recording-act, is here with all surviving original members, as are the up-and-coming and equally business-innovating Odd Future, aka OFWGKTA (by their fans) or Golf Wang (by their fanatics). And if that’s not enough crews, then there’s The Living Legends, Dipset (their first West Coast appearance as a unit), and Hieroglyphics. Kendrick Lamar, DJ Quik, Dilated Peoples, and Psycho Realm round out the announced lineup.

Check the flyers after the jump: read more »

And another one for you backstage at Rock The Bells 2001. B-Real and Davey D talks about the evolution of Cypress Hill on records and on stage, and how they are straddling the lines between hip-hop and hard rock.

Rock The Bells, the hip-hop superfestival that has also become a Bay Area fixture every summer since 2005, just concluded west coast run last weekend with a show at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in Mountain View, Calfornia. We’ll have backstage interviews and other exclusive materials from the show later, but for now, take a look at the photos that Madelynn and Amari Kenoly took for us in the crowds and press pits.

Guerilla Union has announced this year’s Rock the Bells Festival lineup, which will tour with stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. As with last year’s event, Rock the Bells is going classic, bringing in some of the biggest hip-hop artists around to perform their most memorable material. This year’s headliners are no strangers to the now-classic summertime hip-hop festival, as Ms. Lauryn Hill, performing songs from Miseducation, and Nas, performing from Illmatic, set to grace the same stage. Joining them on the classics tip are Cypress Hill, Mos Def and Talib Kweli as Black Star, half of the Wu-Tang (GZA, RZA as host, Ghost and Rae, and Masta Killah), Erykah Badu, Mobb Deep (along with Big Noyd), Immortal Technique, Black Moon, Souls of Mischief, Evidence of Dilated Peoples, and Slaughterhouse, the supergroup of Joe Budden, Royce the 5’9″, Joell Ortiz and Crooked I. For the cool kids, there’s Mac Miller, Blu, Exile and Fashawn, Childish Gambino (aka, Donald Glover of TV’s Community), Random Axe, Macklemore, Big KRIT, Freddie Gibbs and Roc Marciano, all there on support.

For more, check out rockthebells.net. The flyer is after the jump. read more »