We’d yet to see a real live hip-hop act headline at Break Inn, so I was quite excited to learn that 1200 Techniques front man and all round Aussie rapper extraordinaire NFA was coming to rock the Cave in support of his new solo album. In light of the main attraction there were a few more gold chains and Polo shirts on display than usual, but this just meant the folk at Chinese Laundry had successfully managed to tap into the hip-hop crowd, something I thought they might fail to do given the venue’s reputation as a ‘dance’ club. There even appeared to be a little confusion about the nature of the event; during the middle of some pants tearing breakbeat I overheard one guy in the bathroom saying “yeah man this is some pretty heavy R&B”.

The Laundry was being taken care of by all the usual suspects and it was Shamozzle who got the ball rolling with a terrific selection of tunes from across the breaks spectrum. There could have been a little more direction to his set but it’s a minor gripe and there were some absolute gems in there. The Impossibles followed on doin what they do best – getting the party crankin with what is becoming quite an intricate set-up involving multiple laptops and midi controllers. To be honest it sometimes feels like they could be doing more with what they have (ie, it still sounds like a DJ set a lot of the time), but the boys are definitely getting more creative, and after all it takes a long time to set-up a proper live show.

So with a belly full of breaks I went to check out the main act, who unfortunately seemed to be having a little technical difficulty with the microphones. Apart from a couple of rude cable farts later on, they did manage to sort it out, and NFA’s voice rang out loud and clear through the Cave’s glorious sound system. All up I was pretty impressed with the performance, he dropped a few 1200 classics and of course plenty of the new stuff which had the all punters grooving and singing along. I was particularly impressed with a track he worked on with Roots Manuva, whose style of beats I am particularly fond of and which suited NFAs style like a glove.

Dopamine rounded out the night in the Laundry with a very different set to what I’m used to hearing from the big man. He mentioned to me earlier in the night that it’d been awhile since he’d gotten funky and so that’s just what he did, with a much more light hearted, main room sound which – for once – didn’t inspire animalistic foot stomping and nasty, aggressive thoughts. There were plenty of 4/4 tracks thrown into the mix as well, throwing light on his past as a tech DJ.

All up another wholly satisfactory evening of music and entertainment at your Friday night home of breaks, beats and bobs. The live hip-hop worked a treat and I get the feeling that NFA will not be the last Aussie hip-hopper to grace the Cave with his presence.