New Zealand’s foremost practitioner of the fine art of rapping over beats Scribe opened Saturday night’s precedings in the Horden Pavilion. On the back of my accolades for his latest and most impressive The Crusader release (which went to Number 1 in New Zealand), Scribe worked hard to please a largely stand offish crowd, although recent airplay on JJJ, 2ser and FBi of his Not Many and Stand Up singles did help break through to the punters.

Next up was Money Mark, who most of you would remember from his days as keyboardist for Beastie Boys, before he decided to focus his own stuff and the Beastie Boys decided to focus on Mix-Master Mike. Money Mark had a minor hit with his Money Mark’s Keyboard Repair album and now tours with a band and turntablist Mike Realm. And, damn it, they can really play. Although their blend of funk, humour, invention and self-indulgence seemed mostly lost on an audience who had one thing on its collective mind, Jurassic 5. Perhaps the multi-instrumental Money Mark and band would be better suited to a smaller venue and a crowd more familiar with his recordings, having said that when the band really got going the audience was ready to go with them. Closing with Mike Realm’s solo turntable antics also worked well and he, with a bit of encouraging, got the crowd’s lighters and mobile phones into the air with a funkified version of John Lenon’s Imagine to close their set.

Before J5 got started we were treated to a beat selection master class from DJ NuMark (one of the two turntablists in J5), showcasing selections of his new Hands On mix-tape release. Showing us how to find beats and put them together, he then broke out into a less interesting conventional DJ set with a segue through Hilltop Hoods’ anthem, People in the Front Row. That track brought one the biggest cheers of the night, showing that this may have been a crowd made up entirely by well dressed white folk, but they know their hip-hop.

J5, with their 4 MCs and 2 DJs, took to the stage to a massive reception from the Horden Pavilion filled to the rafters with easy to please punters. It’s been 2 long years since their mega-successful Power in Numbers release, and that includes some 14 months of solid touring for the band. The boys have played these same tracks so many times over the last few years, that the excitement that we witnessed in their shows during the last tour was not so readily apparent. Having said that J5 are consummate performers, plus their live show is as close to a rock & roll show that a hip-hop band can come, who produced an incredibly enjoyable experience for everyone who had forked out big bucks to attend.

This show was very similar to the Power in Numbers tour, with all the classics from Quality Control and Power in Numbers, notably crowd favourites What’s Golden, Freedom, Quality Control, W.O.E. Is Me (World of Entertainment) and even the old school Concrete Schoolyard. It also included the vastly enjoyable vignette from DJs Cut Chemist and NuMark, where NuMark plays and mixes short sharp samples from the music of 30s, using what looks to be a fisher-price toy and Cut Chemist dons a wearable turntable and scratches over beats as he wanders around the stage. Happily J5 also played a few tracks that we’d never heard before, including one from the soon to be released solo disc from the “verbal Herman Munster” Charli 2na called A Fish Outta Water. Despite the sense that I’d “seen it all before” I couldn’t help but be roused into bopping my head and shaking my hips and quality selection old school sounds and inspiring, engaging and cleverly presented lyrics. It was also heartening to see a band willing to talk about the politics that are clearly apparent in their lyrics. They closed in show with, I think, the strongest elements of night’s performance, all four rappers had a chance to freestyle before they talked about the feelings on their countries’ abhorrent approach to foreign policy as a segue into the anthemic Freedom, throughout which the crowd eagerly participated.

Suffice to say J5 are huge in Australia. I met people from all over NSW who were in town just for the show, most probably due to the quality of their previous live performances. I think that Aussies just love J5 and Blackalicious for that matter, because of their danceable style of Hip-Hop and their Rock Show-esq performances, to be directly contrasted with the self-indulagant (bordering on boring) 50 cent and self-indulgant (bordering on insulting) Missy Elliott who both recently toured, and lets be honest we Australians are a rock loving bunch. Although I prefer to think that its because Australians will always be into artists who want to talk about relationships, love, life, fun, partying and, dare I say it, politics more than people rapping about “niggers”, “hoes” and guns. But who am I to say.