O.J. Simpson to Appear at Hip-Hop Concert

CINCINNATI – O.J. Simpson is scheduled to appear at a hip-hop concert next month in the same neighborhood torn by three days of rioting last April.

"O.J. is promoting peace," said promoter Anthony Pierre of Mactone Investments. "He is coming to Cincinnati to show there can be change."

Simpson will toss autographed footballs to concertgoers, tell jokes and introduce the headline acts, rap artists Foxy Brown and Juvenile.

Foxy Brown, a Florida rap artist, will debut the song "In the Mind of O.J." at the March 2 show.

The show will be held at historic Music Hall in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood that was the scene of the city's worst rioting since the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Three nights of violence followed a white officer's fatal shooting April 7 of a black man fleeing police on misdemeanor charges.

Pierre said the hip-hop concert will be the first in more than a decade at the 3,400-seat Music Hall, home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Opera.

Pierre said the hip-hop crowd was among Simpson's biggest supporters when he went on trial for killing his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her acquaintance, Ronald Goldman. The former NFL and movie star was acquitted of those deaths in 1995, but later found liable in a wrongful death lawsuit.

Simpson, who now lives in a suburb of Miami, has appeared at hip-hop concerts in Estero, Fla., and East Hartford, Conn., in the past six months.