My review of De La Soul @ Jazz Cafe, London, 24/09/05, Pics + Video

[On The Edge of Insanity]

This was my second time seeing De La this year, but this time it was at a smaller venue than before, so I knew this would be a lot doper.

Their support act was Butta Verses, who, despite various technical difficulties did manage to rock the crowd pretty well, and whose last track sounded real dope. His album could be worth checking out based on his performance.

Maseo came down and got his mixer setup, ran through the highlights of Tribe Called Quest's back catalogue, before scratching in "Verbal Clap" as Pos & Trugoy made their way to the stage. Throughout the concert they went through about half the tracks from the Grind Date, including "No No No", for which Butta Verses performed his verse, having just freestyled a verse at the end of "The Bizness". As the concert was on saturday night, you knew they had to drop "A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays", which was really dope and got the crowd amped, especially as it was then followed by Me, Myself & I. They did a few more tracks of their first couple of albums, and then the normal party starters such as "All Good" and "Oooh" from their more recent albums. After running through the starts of "Rock Kokaine Flow" and "Ego Trippin" they then got a few girls on stage for "Baby Phat", with Trugoy getting laughs from the crowd for telling a women in the VIP section to "fuck off" when she tried to get him to pick her to go onstage, having been already taking the mick out of VIP throughout the night. De La then left the stage, before reappearing to play "Eye Patch", "Stakes Is High" and "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" before leaving to a great response from the audience.

The X-Ecutioners were then going to do a DJ set for the rest of the night, and after taking bout half an hour to setup they got into it. Unfortunately, Roc Raida was the only original member of the collective there, and the other two guys were nowhere near in the same league as him skills wise. They all took it in turns to show off their skills, as I said, the other two being pretty lackluster, but Roc Raida killing it with his "Ninja of Rap" beat juggling routine. Although I had seen him do this exact same routine on the Scratch film DVD, to see it live in the flesh was pretty special, his hand movements are just so quick. After a while I started to get a bit bored of their set in general, mainly because they didn't really seem to be doing anything together, it was just one of them rocking, then another one of them taking over, which after a while did get a little boring. Im general though I can only watch scratch DJing for so long before I'm just like "drop the fucking record!", having the intro to Gangstarr's "Full Clip" scratched to pieces for about half a minute before dropping into the track would have been fine, but five minutes really was pushing it, and even then they did play more than the first four bars of it once they did let it drop.

Overall I had a really good night. De La were really dope, much better in a more intimate environment, and they pretty much had the crowd in the palm of their hands all night. It was just a shame that the X-ecutioners didn't really live up to their reputation.

Pictures







Video

http://s58.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3CUCNPT7XENE12KBZXHUS44UA3

[CRAFTY]

Nice review...thanks for the pics.
The X-ecutioners are coming to Belgium next month, but I'm not sure yet whether I'll go. What exactly does their set exist of? Just cutting up records? They don't bring out an MC to rhyme over some beats?

[On The Edge of Insanity]

They didn't for this concert, it was literally just scratching. If "proper" members such as Rob Swift will be joining Roc Raida then it will probably be worth seeing, because as a collective they are really dope, but this was just them individually doing stuff, which just got boring after a while. If they headlining something I guess they'd put more effort in, but you can never be sure.

[CRAFTY]

Hmmmm...I think I won't go then. I won't risk spending 25 euros on a show I'm not even sure of whether it'll be a good concert or not.
Thanks for the info.

[On The Edge of Insanity]

Hmmmm...I think I won't go then. I won't risk spending 25 euros on a show I'm not even sure of whether it'll be a good concert or not.
Thanks for the info.

No probs