I was re-listening to Boy In Da Corner just a few weeks ago and wondered to myself what kind of people would turn up to a Dizzee Rascal show in 2008. I got my answer as I shuffled into the Prince with the rest of the hung-over looking punters on Tuesday evening. A fair share of the crowd looked like casualties from the Big Day Out – Corey Worthington lookalikes with sideways hats and day-glo outfits. To be fair, there was also a smattering of nerdy looking indie kids, a few underground hip-hoppers, and some St Kilda fashion bitches (in the non-gender specific sense of the word) just for good measure.
The first thing that struck me about this was that Dizzee Rascal had come a long, long way from the East London grime scene that spawned him. I wondered how it would all translate, if at all. Did these kids ‘get it’, or were they just here to be cool? Macromantics was on warm up duties, and I was surprised at how little the punters were getting involved with her set – although they did get mildly mobile for tunes like Scorch, Apple Crumble and Physical. She rocked a sterling set. The sound wasn’t exactly perfect; why is it so hard to get engineers who can mix rap properly? Regardless of all this, Miss Macro and Amy (my god she’s cute) displayed the professional and punky approach to hip-hop that makes them one of the best live shows in the country.
After their 40 minute set the crowd gradually warmed up and Macro delivered a strong finish, handing the stage over to DJ Semtex (who is Dizzee’s tour DJ). Semtex is an interesting character – a big scary looking guy with one arm. He’s an extremely tight DJ and a major player in the UK hip-hop world. It’s pretty bizarre watching a dude with one arm use his mouth on the cross fader and hype the crowd like a true pro – getting them to chant along with the commercial hip-hop bangers he was dropping as he mega-mixed his way through about 30 tracks in fifteen minutes.
Semtex very skillfully built up a strong sense of anticipation, and when Dizzee finally hit the stage (at 10:30pm sharp, as billed) the crowd went absolutely ballistic. I don’t mean that in any casual way… I mean that the kids in the crowd went totally psycho and the man of the moment, along with his heavy hype man (whose name I forget), surveyed the ocean of screaming fans with cool appreciation. Dizzee began working his way through older hits like I Luv You and Fix Up Look Sharp, and I found it surprising that many kids seemed to know all the words. I still remember Dizzee’s show a few years ago when the Aussie crowds just stood there looking bemused, trying to work out how to dance to music they’d clearly never heard before.
Since 2004, however, the rest of the world has definitely had a chance to catch up with the grime and jungle influenced hip-hop style that’s made him so unique. After performing Temptation (complete with visuals of Dizzee hangin’ out with the Arctic Monkeys) the rapper pulled a seemingly strange, but very well calculated maneuver. Semtex dropped an actual Arctic Monkeys track, which was mixed into Smells Like Teen Spirit, which was mixed into 7 Nation Army... yep, he did a rock tribute medley, which – although mildly irritating to ‘proper hip-hop/grime heads’ like myself – unified the crowd and whipped them into a (fairly gentle) mosh-pit.
Just when I was wondering where it was all heading, Semtex flipped Sirens and everyone (including me) started bouncing around and pumping the air like Mexican jumping beans on amphetamines. The entire set was extremely well planned, Dizzee asked if there were any old skool jungle heads in the crowd. I would estimate there were probably about three, but everyone shouted “yeah” anyway, so Semtex did the tribute melody thing again, working his way quickly through classics such as Oh Jungle and Incredible (y’know, it goes ‘wicked! wicked! junglist massive’), with Dizzee and his nameless (but skilled) sidekick once again dancing, rapping and toasting over the top, mash-up style.
All in all I have to say it was an incredible show and definitely had been calculated work for a crowd who were maybe not from a hip-hop/grime/jungle background. I guess you’d learn a few tricks touring the USA and playing massive festivals the world over, not to mention having an arsenal of anthems up your sleeve. In fact, that’s really gotta help too.
