As booming cannon salutes echoed, streamers drifted down. The crowds around the square surged like ripples from a fountain, colorful banners and handheld signs rolling in wave after wave.
The opening ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Gotham Music Festival was held in Central Square. Before the official opening ceremony that afternoon, a parade of floats set out from Central Square and traveled along Central Avenue through the East Side and South Side, where the most out-of-town visitors gathered. More than seventy floats followed one another in an unbroken line, performing continuously for four hours from 8:00 a.m. to noon.
The floats were divided into five themes: music and art, architecture and the city, culture and history, sports and dance, and life and nature.
The music theme needed no explanation. It naturally matched the Gotham Music Festival and focused on East Coast rap.
East Coast rap in the 1990s was in a slump, caught between artistic exploration and commercialization. Although there were still godfather-like figures such as Puff Daddy, who had never given up and kept searching for new talent, by now most rap fans had their headphones filled with those West Coast albums that were currently dominating the scene.
Fortunately, in 1994, a miraculous album saved the East Coast. The familiar Ready To Die quickly swept across the United States, drawing people's attention to East Coast rap once more.
The Notorious B.I.G.—the Biggie still adored and remembered by countless rap fans—had descended like a god, slaughtering the charts with a single album.
Though his achievements were dazzling, Biggie was actually mired in some difficulties. Rap fans active in that era might have known about his tangled feud with the famous West Coast rapper Tupac.
Simply put, the two had once been friends, the kind who recognized greatness in one another. But