Last week, Tuesday night, 10.00 pm; yes, I should have been in bed on account of the fact that I am a working man whose day begins at 7.00 am. Alas, I was just queuing up outside the Stylus venue in the bowels of Leeds University’s student union waiting to see some Hip Hop heroes. Here is a brief recount of the happenings down there that night in the form of a top 5 of things that happened:
5. Local Hip Hoppers Dot to Dot’s (couldn’t really hear if that was their name, you know hip hop sound systems are rubbish), Chief Wiggum, awesome beat boxers Mega Mouth and Balls Deep and crew Don’t Talk to Strangers repped the city. DTTS were blighted by numerous problems; they had forgotten a backing track and only had the vocal track (they should have lip synched) and then the power on the stage went off leaving them to rhyme freestyle for a hot minute. Sadly the girl they had brought along to sing was drowned out by the beat due to the lack of experienced rap gig sound engineers.
4. Sinical of DMC fame gave us the pleasure of a pleasantly technical DJ set.
3. Broke ‘N’ £nglish played their game where they freestyle about 3 topics suggested by the crowd. One guy who seemed to have paid his entire ticket price to make this happen lunged to the stage and made sure they heard him shouting ‘orange, orange’. Now orange, as we all know, is a word that doesn’t have any proper rhyming words. Yes Eminem did rhyme it with ‘syringes’ but that didn’t really work and it was annoying to boot. Basically B’N’E obviously have encountered this guy’s counterparts before as after ending a line with ‘lozenge’ Strategy totally berated the ‘t**t [who] asked me to rhyme orange’! Backed up by DJ/MC
Konny Kon they gave a good, energetic show. Check out their
myspace and their radio 1 podcast (that was the first time I heard them).
2. Task Force slightly annoyed the security by announcing ‘the rowdy part of their set’ (after a pretty rowdy first half) and encouraging people to do all sorts of unruly things such as starting a mosh pit, pogo jumping (a la the punks) and stage diving. Heads took them up on their offer and the big ol’ bouncers begun to bounce very angrily. The show was stopped after they dragged one guy outside and Chester P announced that he was getting stomped outside, this notice concluded in half of the gig-goers and half of the artists and their entourages rushing the security out the back. Task Force were accompanied onstage by
Inja (and his big grin) and DJ
Louis Slipperz and they basically rocked in a truly rock ‘n’ roll style.
1. Fallacy was there (and he shook my hand)! Pretty much all night UK legend Fallacy was stood at the back of the stage admiring the energy of Broke ‘N’ £nglish and Task Force. Task Force passed the mic for a guest verse at the end of their set.
Big up to
New Bohemia who know how to throw a party and how to book a good handful of artists. Check out their
myspace to see the other events they have organised in Leeds. It was a shame I had to go at 2.00 am because DJ Format had just kicked off his set in fine style with ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, maybe next time eh?
Here a couple of tracks so you can get a flavour of the music if you've never heard it before. The Task Force track is actually my favourite tune at the moment:
When heard in the context of a whole LP, Skuff and Inja’s new musical direction makes more than sense. I wasn’t a great fan of Inja’s ‘Hats Low’ but when the remix pops up at the end of ‘The Skuff & Inja Show’ all becomes clear.
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