The Kern County Fair has always had free musical entertainment for the public with at least one headliner and the Budweiser Pavilion was packed to capacity on Sept. 26, for fair goers to see Salt-N-Pepa perform.

There were people spilling outside the gates at each entrance into the pavilion, trying to catch a glimpse of the stars or hear a song they really liked.

The gates to the Pavilion opened at 6:30 p.m. to allow people to snag their seats before the performance started at 8 p.m.

Alyssa Estes, entertainment security, explained how packed the pavilion was.

“We open the gates at 6:30 p.m. and by 7:30 p.m. we were at maximum capacity and had to close the entrance gates,” she said.

This notorious, female MC group attracted more than just the attention of the local patrons, they even had a smaller scale celebrity present for their appearance, Sundai Love from America’s Next Top Model cycle 13 was there as well.

“I come every year as a routine and traditional thing, but I wanted to see Salt-N-Pepa too,” Love stated.

The group opened up with one of their less known, but still popular songs such as “Are U Ready?” and began getting the crowd’s participation with comments like “Bakersfield are you ready?” with the crowd bellowing out their responses.

Salt-N-Pepa did choruses and verses from each song they chose to perform and switched more rapidly than the audience expected. The next song up was something the older crowds knew the words to.

“My Mic Sounds Nice!” rang out through the whole fairgrounds as some audience sang along with the pioneer, female, hip-hop/rap group.

The group rapped the first verse of the song and started getting the crowd hype again by talking to them and asking questions like “where my old school hip-hop fans at?”

For the next anthem, the women of the group chose “Let’s Talk About Sex”, which was another crowd pleaser. A majority of the crowd knew the words while others knew the chorus.

The ladies’ attire even added to the effect of the live concert with their dresses and shirts shimmering in the spotlight as they rocked the stage with their flows.

The next melody really had the crowd active in its presentation because Salt-N-Pepa invited some of Bakersfield’s own men on stage for their reenactment of “What a Man.”

As the men were being chosen by Pepa, Salt talked about her husband and how they had been together for 22 years now and once the beat dropped with the chosen few on stage, the now duo performed one of their megahits.

They once again had the crowd on its feet swaying to the music as they grabbed their mates if they had one. Once they finished slowing it down with one of their subtler jams and had the volunteers exit the stage, they switched into a snippet of their song “Shoop.”

As the show wound down, the crowd of young and older began a soft chant for “Push it,” but the group didn’t plan to do that just yet, so they started mixing a few songs not of their own making, to keep it interesting like DMX’s “Up in Here,” “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice and a few other classic, older hip-hop and R&B songs.

At the end of the mixing, they finally performed what the crowd had been waiting for, “Push It,” and the crowd broke into cheers and began singing and dancing to the catchy lyrics and beat.

After “Push It”, the girls began saying “thank you” and their closing remarks, so most of the crowd began to get up and leave but the ladies were not quite done yet. They brought the performance to a more serious tone and closed with Salt’s verse on the newer aged gospel music single, “Stomp” by Kurt Franklin.

Those really interested, which were the majority, stopped where they now were and let them finish as others bumped past them to exit the pavilion.