If you ignored the Xbox truck and Virgin Mobile booth, the scene at the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg Saturday looked like a hip-hop period piece circa 1988. Socially conscious messages issued from the stage. Parents in Afrocentric garb chased kids in Basquiat T-shirts. Barbecue smoke wafted from one corner; a graffiti artist constructed pieces on two large canvases in another. Hiphop legend DJ Red Alert milled around in the crowd.

Even the name of the event – the First Annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival – sounded like an artifact; something you’d see on yellowing fliers at a “History of Hip-Hop” exhibit. And, in a way, that’s what it was. The low-key, neighborhood-y event was designed to present a side of hip-hop culture that has been lost in the avalanche of guns and rims and ice and hoes. As the program states: “Senseless violence, urban neglect, unchecked materialism and lack of community involvement are all common misperceptions of both Brooklyn and Hip-Hop. The point of [the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival] is to smash those stereotypes and let the world know that Brooklyn and Hip-Hop represent diversity, creativity, peace, and family.”

There was a time, of course, when that was actually true. In the late 1980s, as hip-hop was first establishing a national following, it presented two very different faces: one scowling beneath a Raiders cap, the other smiling in beads and a kinky hairdo. The era of N.W.A. was also the era of the Native Tongues movement – spearheaded by outfits like De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, and a Tribe Called Quest – that combined party rap humor with a sense of musical heritage and a commitment to using rap to address the issues facing the black community.

A quick scan of the billboard charts confirms that the sons of N.W.A. – Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, the Game – have triumphed over the sons of the Native Tongues. But after a decade in remission, socially conscious rap is making a comeback. Chicago rapper Common recently debuted at no. 2 on the Billboard Album Chart with his album “Be,” a jazzy, old-school meditation on family, faith, and black travails that name drops Malcolm X and John Coltrane, rather than the gangsta triumvirate of Tupac, Biggie, and Eazy E. “We struggle and grieve, fight / We write songs about wrong because it’s hard to see right / We look to the sky hoping it will bleed light / Reality’s a bitch and I heard that she bites,” raps Common on the lead single “The Corner,” between lines by a black preacher shouting lines like “Black power” and “Black is beautiful.”

Kanye West, the man who kicked off the resurgence of socially conscious rap with his 2004 album “The College Dropout,” will release his follow-up, the highly anticipated “Late Registration,” in August. The mixtape version of “Diamonds,” the first single, is surprisingly activistic. It’s a comment on the bloody Sierra Leone diamond trade, an issue he first learned about from Q-Tip of a Tribe Called Quest. “Though it’s thousands of miles away / Sierra Leone connects to what we go through today,” he raps. “Over here it’s the drug trade, we die from drugs / Over there they die from what we buy from drugs.” Even bling, the song argues, can be enjoyed responsibly.

The Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival lineup didn’t include stars of this caliber, but it stood squarely on their coattails; its purpose was to provide a forum for lesser-known acts in this same vein. Headliners Brand Nubian mostly provided a sense of history and established the proper context. Their set included still-resonant classics from the 1990 album “All for One,” and unremarkable newer songs. But the stars of the show were two talented acts looking to make the leap to the national stage.

Rhymefest is a jowly, jokey rapper from Chicago, and – as he mentioned so often that his DJ mocked him – a friend of West’s. His biggest claim to fame is that he co-wrote “Jesus Walks,” the Grammy Award-winning song that appeared on “The College Dropout.” “I had the ‘Jesus Walks’ sample and the dope idea / If K hooked it up, then this could be the joint of the year,” he rapped. “So I give my nigga the sample, then the joint took off / But the verse that ‘fest did somehow got lost.” He proceeded to perform the lost verse, which was as good as anything Kanye does on the song.

His other material confirmed that it was no fluke. Backed by an R &B duet called the Blue Collar Experience, Rhymefest performed a song called “Devil’s Pie” about the temptations that threaten to lead a young black man astray. Stealing a page from late-1980s rap, he used humor to avoid coming off preachy or self-righteous. “I fight for strength, industry grinding for cents / I know I’m ahead of my time because I’m behind on my rent,” he rapped.

The Durham, N.C., trio Little Broth er was less political than simply realistic – which in the current rap environment almost constitutes a political position in itself. Over minimal, tripping horn, bell, and soul samples provided by DJ/producer 9th Wonder (who has become something of a star himself, producing recent tracks for Jay-Z and Destiny’s Child), MCs Phonte and Big Pooh set about puncturing the hip-hop fantasy. They rapped about actual relationships with women – even marriage – not just groupie trysts. They spoke about regret, an emotion that seems entirely lacking in the gangsta makeup.

Even when dealing with the same subject matter as their mainstream peers – drugs, violence, beefs – their language was decidedly middle class and un-hood. Drug dealers do “more peddling than Greg LeMond”; gangstas “get stained like armoires at Ikea”; rivals are coffeehouse MCs that “battle with sandals and capris on.” These lines are remarkable mostly because they’re so unremarkable; Little Brother’s radical approach is to rap about a version of reality much like the one lived by hip-hop fans every day. The question is whether it’s one hip-hop fans care to hear about.