Today I was asked by Top Billin' guvnor Si to knock up a review of the Akil gig at Jack Chams last Wednesday (30/03/11) as he is too busy spamming everyone and there dog with his Blackberry! ha ha! So here goes!!
Good ol' DJ Darko (Unleashed, Plymouth) had teamed up with my boy Tom (1 Step from The Krate Krusadas) to once again bring the legend that is Akil MC (famously known for being one of the Jurassic 5) down to Plymouth. The original venue was set to be the infamous White Rabbit (Plymouth's finest live music venue) which is standard for an event of this caliber!!
Unfortunately, due the abundance of rain on that day, the venue lost electrical power, so the event had to migrate to White Rabbit's little brother Jack Chams (Ebrington St, Plymouth). My first thoughts were "this is place is gonna be rammed to the rafters!!" but later, as I will explain in due course, this proved to not be the case (in a positive way).
So I arrived under the care of Tower Cabs at around 10pm joined by my entourage consisting of Reem, Vic and newly found chum Josh (big up's for the tickets!) and headed in to find Battlestations resident DJ Fu Styles gracing the one's and two's (repped it as always breadbin!! dope joint after dope joint!!)
The usual crew were in the house, Kit (getting his Sam Malone on behind the bar), Mr and Mrs Blakeatron, the White Rabbit / Jack Chams gang and of course the warm up act, local hip-hop heroes, The Scribes.
As Fu Styles set drew to a close, it was of course time for The Scribes to grace the stage, and from what I heard Lacey saying, this was their first time back in Plymouth for a long time, so was interesting to see what they been up to since the last time I saw them! All I can say about the The Scribes on this evening, even though there were no monitor speakers, is that there stage presence is exceptional!! They seriously get better and better every time I see them! And of of course my man DJ Blakeatron held down the turntable fort extremely well!! Thumbs up performance! Good job lads!!
After The Scribes did their thing, it was indeed the moment everyone was waiting for, time for the mighty Akil MC to take to the stage along with his best friend since kid's and original DJ before Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist, DJ T-Minus!!
Now, I think it's time to come back to what I was saying earlier about exactly how many people reached this. As I mentioned before, I was anticipating a "tin of sardines" type evening seeing as Jack Chams is about three times the size of the White Rabbit! But, to my surprise, there must have been around 20 - 30 people (rough guess) in the building when it came time for Akil. But, personally for me, this was just the right amount of people because it made it all the more intimate! Of course with someone like Akil from one of the most famous and well respected hip-hop crews in the world ever, Jurassic 5, you would picture a massive venue with hundreds of people and lights etc. This was more like going to a pub with live music, but instead of a crappy cover band, you had one of the most legendary hip-hop artist of all time!! I loved it!!
Rather than doing the usual performance on stage with the DJ behind him, Akil spent the entire set in the middle of the dance floor whilst surrounded by everybody in the club and basically fed off the audience! It was like everyone that was there was Akil's friend. He would be chatting in amongst songs to people, being funny, taking pictures and even offered the mic around to any MC's in the place for a bit of a freestyle session!!
I would reel off what songs he performed etc, but i was buzzed off the sheer atmosphere of the evening to remember to be honest! The set basically consisted of some new Akil joints, some old J5 tunes, some straight spitting over instrumentals (T-Minus dropping that unreleased Dilla beat had to be my personal favourite!) and DJ T-Minus performing a rather impressive scratch routine which involved everyone opening and closing there fingers (that was a sight! ha ha!).
All in all I had one of the best evenings out in a long time!! Akil, you the man!! ;)
Shouts go out to Vic, Reem, Josh, Si, Kit, Blake, Hannah, Fu Styles, Ben and all the Chams crew, The Scribes, J Man, Darko, Steve Strong, everyone else in the crowd who made it the night it was, and last but not least the birthday boy Tom aka 1 Step who was responsible for all of this happening (really cool to catch up with you again sir! Really proud of the moves your making!! Credit were credit is due!).
And on that note, let's end with Akil's new joint "One 4 the $$$", peace!!!
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