Over the last few years, the term "hip hop is dead," has been thrown around more than the neighborhood football.

In an age of technology where making a simple beat with a bootlegged audio production application and altering your voice with Auto-Tune in order to sound like T-Pain is enough to get "bedroom rappers/producers/djs" signed, it's no wonder people are beginning to feel like the art is lost. While most people are tossing around this insult to hip hop, few are offering any sort of solution. I say few, because there are some purists out there who are putting in the effort, energy and time to study where hip hop started, where it has been and where it is going.

He calls for something new, offering not complaints, but answers. Del The Funky Homosapien pushes me on to the idea that hip hop is birthing something new.

Hip hop isn't dead. Hip hop isn't evolving. Hip hop is, in fact, influencing and feeding into a new vibe. It’s not another offshoot or recycled sound, but rather something completely fresh. What is it going to sound like? He doesn’t have an answer for this. He just knows that something is brewing in that head of his, and he is using every tool in his box to unlock the doors to all of the answers.

I met up with Del at his hotel room about an hour before his show here in Sacramento on Sunday. Walking into this guy's hotel room is like entering the pro audio department of your local musical instrument retailer. The back corner of the room is nothing but audio production equipment and cables strewn every which direction. Del literally carries a portable studio with him wherever he goes. He is constantly working on ideas for his next album, whether it be a solo project, something with his group Hieroglyphics or one of his many side projects like Deltron 3030.

I gathered pretty quickly that Del isn't much for resting. He is an avid student of music theory and music in general. Del has been in the game for two decades, and progression in art is not a topic that he takes lightly. He studies funk, blues and other genres to better understand that which feeds the beast known as hip hop.

"I learned to play [James Brown's] 'The Funky Drummer' on a drum machine so that I wouldn't have to sample it anymore," he said. Hip Hop was created as a sample-based genre, drawing its influence from the past works of others and building on top of that to become one of the most successful industries in the world. So when artists like Del learn what has been done, instead of just sampling from it, I see something more being developed than ‘hip hop’ as we know it.

Del and I talked for a bit, and he mentioned that he was just getting back from spending two months in the mountains. Between the Winter X Games in Colorado and Utah's Sundance Film Festival, Del has been working hard to keep his presence in the industry known. Well sir, judging by the turnout of the show tailing the interview, I'd say you are doing a great job at that.

Sunday's show at Harlow's on J Street was a wake-up call to the city of Sacramento. There is a love and deep-rooted culture of hip hop here, and it's events like this that bring the people together and feed the movement.

Opening acts like the Boom Bap Bullies worked the already-anxious crowd with the auditory foreplay of a seasoned hip hop act. Offering a diverse soundscape of songs to cover most every base of hip hop lover in the crowd, no one person's neck was left unmoved.

Enter Bukue One. When he speaks, these words don’t fall on deaf ears. Each and every minute Bukue is on stage, he is reaching out to the crowd and grabbing the attention of every soul in the building. It's no wonder to me why Del chooses this as his warm-up act.

It's always been my belief that words are the most valuable currency, and Bukue spends his words wisely, investing them in the minds of a very receptive collective of individuals. Every person in the crowd was left just a little more rich. So at that point, the minds in the crowd were more than awake and definitely firing on ALL cylinders.

Next in the evening's heavy-hitting lineup was Myka 9, and this man is anything but new blood in the arena. This veteran emcee out of Los Angeles, representing Project Blowed, Freestyle Fellowship and Haiku D'Etat is Armed with heavily thought, lightning-fast rhymes, a diverse and eclectic set list and crowd control on the level as other greats like KRS-ONE.

Myka 9 picked up right were Bukue One left off and kept the crowd on its toes. Just like a fresh cup of coffee, Myka 9 showed that he is good to the last drop and had the whole crowd in a frenzy. Looking to the left and to the right, I saw glasses raised, people watching the stage and smiles all around. Off to the left of the stage was an artist painting live on a canvas covered in news paper, and front and center was the B-Boy circle.

Sensory overload occurred! Could all of this have been happening in Sacramento? Oh, yes!

The night was far from over as the evening's headliner took the stage. D-E-L stepped out in full force with a set list spanning old to new. There wasn't much downtime in between songs. Backed by Souls Of Mischief member A-Plus, Del brought a very heavy, very party-oriented set to the city of Sacramento. The B-Boy circle doubled in size, and the crowd participation followed suit. You could feel the energy in the atmosphere all the way through the closing song.

Del capped the night off with the Gorillaz Hit "Clint Eastwood," and the crowd was left "Feelin' Glad." Aside from a double-booking faux pas on behalf of the venue, causing a late start to the evening's events, I'd say that the show went off with out a hitch, and Sacramento was blessed with one very diverse evening of hip hop, positive vibes and an energy that I am sure fed into the next day. I'm looking forward to attending more shows like this in the future, and the good folks at TheMashUp.com are making sure this happens.

*Photos courtesy of Jay Canter, www.jaycanter.com