“Who are The Pharcyde?” were the words that would have passed many peoples lips when they received their consolation ticket from the cancelled Busta Rhymes show. As disappointing as this fact is (from my perspective), it’s a fair enough question, because they really haven’t had that much airtime here in Oz. Actually, thinking back, if I hadn’t been watching late night Rage a couple of years ago and seen ‘Drop’, I myself never would have heard of them…

The Pharcyde were Imani, Booty Brown, Slimkid 3 and Fat Lip. The four met at a performing arts program they all enrolled at in South Central LA and from here they recorded a demo, leading them to score a record deal and thus produce their first album release, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde [1992]. Unfortunately now they only consist of Imani, Booty Brown and SlimKid 3 following Fat Lip leaving the group recently as a result of “creative differences”.

While many say (including myself) they aren’t as great as before, they are still a good hip hop group that produce quality work.The Friday night gig at Metro City a couple of weeks ago demonstrated this, but never the less the night was a little disappointing. This was partly due to the fact that there weren’t very many people there, despite the free tickets. Partly because of the lack of knowledge most people had about the group; and partly because the absence of Fat Lip resulted in them not being able to perform many songs, which unfortunately were the better ones!

If you haven’t listened to The Pharcyde albums, but have heard of them, the songs you probably know are ‘Drop’ and ‘It ain’t nothin’ like hip hop music’. They are defiantly the best, but to my dismay were not sung on the night. The front half of the dance floor seemed to really enjoy their night, but apart from them it didn’t look like a lot of people were that amped! I guess these are the people who were only there due to Busta Rhymes, and fair enough it was nothing to what that show would have been.

The group didn’t start until 1am and didn’t go much longer then an hour. They had apparently been made aware about the free ticket situation and made a couple of jokes in reference to this, but this didn’t stop them from putting effort into their show. The guys, though looking slightly tired, danced their weird, wiggly, almost kappa warra type moves around the stage. They sang songs from their three albums, the second Labcabincalifornia, and the third Plain Rap, including ‘oh shit’, ‘yo mama’, ‘pack the pipe’, ’ passing me by’ and ‘runnin’. Songs produced by or featuring mainly Fat Lips were eliminated.