The 36-year-old crowd-surfed, tributed hip hop legends in a four-minute mashup of covers, and serenaded a female student on stage with poetic lyrics. The Chicago native also rapped a three-minute freestyle incorporating Roger Williams, Bristol and his day spent in the town.

"It's exciting for me" to bring true hip hop to Bristol. "Especially seeing how much everyone appreciated it," he said outside the dressing room after his two-hour performance. "It's great to be here. I love the people here."

Junior piano major Amanda Jenkins, the one Common called on stage, said she loved dancing in front of the crowd. She said she always wanted to be a singer and being up there was close to how she had imagined.

"It was a lot of fun and so unexpected," she said, beaming.

Ms. Jenkins wasn't the only one who loved Common's set. Junior Nicole Williams and sophomore Stephanie Lodge agreed Common's performance was "delicious."

Others, like junior Mark Patuta, came to see the concert's second headliner, the Dropkick Murpheys, a punk, Celtic-folk rock band from Boston that is famous among Red Sox Nation for its songs "Tessie" and "I'm Shipping up to Boston."

"They better play [those songs] in order to stay up to expectations," Mr. Patuta said.

The Dropkicks were up to par for the raucous crowd, which included a few crowd surfers, moshers and shirtless guys, and took the stage around 9:45 p.m. in the then pitch black gym.

Putting it together

It is not easy to book headliners like Common, who is on tracks with the likes of Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blidge, Kanye West and John Mayer and who stars alongside Keanu Reeves and Golden Globe winner Forrest Whitaker in the 2008 movie "Street Kings."

Junior Kaitlyn Winter, co-chair of RWU's campus entertainment network (CEN) said student organizers started preparing a year in advance and solicited acts in January, based on who was touring in early 2008.

Senior Matthew DiGiacomo, the school's special events coordinator and CEN co-chair, said he discussed availability and finances with agent Josh Bhatti, and a Facebook survey was the final factor in deciding who it'd be.

"We wanted mixed genres to appeal to everyone and got two on the opposite end," he said. "We didn't tell students who was going on first," so everyone showed from the start.

By Jeremy Rosen

jrosen@eastbaynewspapers.com

Copyright © 2003, The East Bay Newspapers