Hip-hop legends bring the party to Asbury Park

Believe the hype: some of hip-hop’s original, pioneering emcees are coming to Asbury Park.

The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster’s Furious 5 are joining forces for a co-headlining appearance Saturday night at the House of Independents on Cookman Avenue.

It would be easy for Scorpio and Melle Mel to rest on their numerous accolades. Their landmark group, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, became the first hip-hop act inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

In 2012, Rolling Stone named their 1982 single “The Message” the greatest hip-hop song of all time, and that same year the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” album.

But Scorpio and Mel, New York City natives and friends since the fourth grade, are all about looking forward.

“We’re still here, we’re still standing, we’ve still got our same passion from when we joined our first break-dancing group together when we were kids,” said Scorpio, born Eddie Morris.

“And to be doing it now, after all that’s happened and changed in hip-hop and to be in a position to come back and make an impact, that’s our whole thing. We still want to be relevant. We still want to be necessary.”

To that end, Grandmaster’s Furious 5 are set to drop a new single, their first in nearly three decades, on May 27: “Some Kind of Sorry,” an incendiary melting pot of a song that blends Jimi Hendrix-style psychedelic rock with classic hip-hop flare.

“We didn’t want to do the typical hip-hop (structure) of ‘16 bars, hook, 16 bars, hook,’ because we did that in the ’80s,” said Morris. “Especially for our first record back out in a while, we had to make a statement.

“We didn’t want to just fall into the same trap that a lot of artists fall into when they say they’re coming back after a long wait, they come back basically just with the same thing they did 15 or 20 years ago, and that doesn’t really capture people’s attention.”

Jersey Shore ‘Delight’

Asbury Park has shown plenty of love for the Englewood-native Sugarhill Gang over the years.

The business struggles of the group were chronicled in the documentary “I Want My Name Back,” which received its New Jersey premiere at the 2012 Garden State Film Festival, where members were honored with the Spirit of New Jersey Award after playing to a devout crowd at the Paramount Theatre on the city’s boardwalk.

“They showed us mad love the last time we were there (in Asbury Park),” said Henry “Hen Dogg” Williams. “It’s only going to be even better this time around.”

Due to a decades-long battle with the group’s former label, Sugar Hill Records, back in 2012, the trio — Williams, plus founding members Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright and Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien — performed under the name Rapper’s Delight, taken from the title of their landmark 1979 single.

Much has changed in the last few years: Sugar Hill executive Joey Robinson, described by Wright as “our main antagonist,” died in 2015 after years of legal wrangling with Wright and O’Brien and touring as his own version of the Sugarhill Gang with original member Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson, who died in 2014.

These days Wright, O’Brien and Williams are back to performing as The Sugarhill Gang, and as a result, they say they worked more in the last quarter of this year than in all of 2014 and 2015.

But, they insist, decades of personal and business conflict fall by the wayside when they hit the stage.

“All the drama really just fades away,” said Wright. “Number one, we’re artists and musicians, and any drama on the outside just vanishes because we’re there for the people. They’ve come to see a good show, and we’ve come to rock the house because that’s what we love to do. It’s the perfect recipe for a good night.

“There’s no drama, and people don’t have to take out $50 million in insurance for this show. You can have kids from 10 to 100 at our shows.”

GRANDMASTER'S FURIOUS 5 AND THE SUGARHILL GANG

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, April 23

WHERE: House of Independents, 572 Cookman Ave., Asbury Park

TICKETS: $20

INFO: 866-777-8932 or www.houseofindependents.com