My review of Slum Village @ The Jazz Cafe, London 23/01/2005

[On The Edge of Insanity]

I got in the venue pretty early and chilled out and had a couple of pints. At around nineish Aphletik came out to do his support set with Capo and DJ More Fingers. It was his normal opening set (I can't even imagine how many times I have seen him supporting at the Jazz Cafe now), and was alright but nothing amazing. His DJ did a dope west coast tribute though flipping through tons of classic west coast joints in like a five minute routine.

After about another half hour DJ Dels came out on stage, got his shit set up and then introduced T3 onto the stage. He came down and then called on Elzhi, who entered to a great ovation from the crowd. T3 went around a few audience members asking them what they wanted to hear, before DJ Dels got off the turntables went over to the drums and began to play the break from "Fall In Love", the melody then kicked in, and the concert started with one of their best songs. Elzhi filled in Baatin's part (as he would on most of the older songs), and T3 ripped it, sounding pretty much flawless to his studio sound. They proceeded to play a mix of tracks off of all of their albums, before going into a tribute to ODB, getting the crowd to sing along to Shimmy, Shimmy Ya and Brooklyn Zoo. They then did the track with ODB off Detroit Deli, and some soundtrack song that they did with Daft Punk. From that moment on they churned out a whole load of crowd pleasers including "Tainted", "Closer", "Hoes" and "Climax", before T3 did a little speech about the history of Slum Village, said that Baatin was sick right now, and they then went into "The Reunion" to explain the situation with Bat. T3 said that the Dilla rumours are not true, and that although he is sick, he is recovering and is definitely not in a coma. Elzhi then did a track offa his mixtape, before the DJ dropped the sample used in "Selfish". They gave a free copy of Elzhi's mixtape away to the guy that correctly named the sample and then went into "Selfish", before finishing the concert with "Raise It Up" which got everyone real hyped.

Overall, Slum Village were real dope live. T3 admitted that they had only originally planned a 40 minute show, but they put together a dope hour and a half, taking requests for the crowd, and making up the latter half of the concert as they went along. You definitely got a real feeling that they love performing for their fans, and overall it was a real dope way to start my concert watching in 2K5.

Pics:

[Bramsterdam (see ya)]

Props man, I always enjoy your reviews..

[We Fly High]

yeah .. good review waitin for the dj. haha. havent seen you post too much recently. keep us updated with more.