CSUMB promoter Edward Sena says he was told that Monterey crowds don't show up for hip-hop shows, so he and his team booked Oakland underground hip-hop group Zion I at the Black Box Caberet for a Friday night show kicked off by the return of Para la Gente. Turns out, he was misinformed. The renovated music venue was maxed out at its capacity of 263, with about 200 more students turned away, said Sena, and the police turning away oncomers in the parking lot.

The turnout was fully justified by a rawkus, hi-energy and uplifting show put on by main MC Zumbi, to spacey beats by DJ and producer AmpLive, a hype man with braided hair and R&B singer. Zumbi worked the crowd, slapping hands with as many of the crammed, bouncing, hollering audience as he could, dancing and pantomiming as he spit evolved lyrics about spirituality and politics, his hype man even dropping speed raps and freestyles that incorporated a somber police officer who scanned the audience to quash the weed smoke that was billowing at the start of the show.

DJ AmpLive came out from behind the decks to the front of the stage to solo on a portable drum machine strapped around his shoulder. And the crowd, almost exclusively students, for whom the show was free, ate it up.

The only apparent indecent incident occured when a girl came outside to the patio to escape the attention of a young man in the crowd.

"He was nibbling on my ears," she said. "That's not cool."

After the show, Zumbi and AmpLive mixed it up with fans, signing posters hyping their coming fifth album, Atomic Clock (perhaps a reference to the "atomic clock" in the movie Watchmen), and taking pictures with eager fans. "Got to make time for the fans," Zumbi writes on their website. And this night, CSUMB students reciprocated big time.