Before I begin this article I would just like to say one thing, if The Age columnist Fiona Scott-Norman’s theory of house music being the single cause for violence in Melbourne is right, then the way to end the illegal drug cartels world wide would be to ban hip hop concerts. Not naming any names or anything, but when a gig is suffering due to some technical difficulties and the MC sparks up a joint on stage and passes into the crowd, that is….well…I’ll leave it up to you to decide…..

The gig I had the chance of reviewing was Method Man and Redman at The Forum, Fox Studios. Being the first actual weekend of the year and all as well as it being on the opening night of Sydney festival, I wasn’t sure the killer kids from Brick City and Shoalin would be able to pull that much of crowd together. This idea was completely disproved on arrival.

The venue was quiet packed out with vast array of people there ranging from old school hip hop heads to metal heads, which I thought was unique, however one of the main things I noticed was that the crowd was on the older end of the usual scale. Having had the experience of going to their first gig in Australia 5 years ago, I felt kind of bewildered when I realised that I, a 22 year old now, was still apart of the younger people in the crowd. This fact may or may have not explained why most of the people in the crowd in The Forum were standing on the 2 levels of stands, not in the moshpit.

I arrived as the Havknots were finishing up their set. They seemed to get a small part of their audience into their music, but the majority was not really digging the scene, I am guessing because a lot of the people weren’t really interested in seeing Aussie hip hop. Next up local DJ Kavi-R hit the decks and got the crowd more lively playing some old school and underground gems by artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Audio Two, Grandmaster Flash, Special Ed etc.

The show really got into full swing however when Method Man and Redman’s DJs hit the decks and started pumping Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg through the airwaves, getting everybody into their right places. After an hour of the DJs cuttin’ and scratchin’, Method man and Redman hit the stage inducing the crowd into frenzy. Unfortunately though, the dynamic duo opened their set to about half an hour of technical difficulties with the microphones being too loud/soft and the one of the mixers cutting in and out, but after a while everything seemed to get into the flow of things.

The opened their set with songs from their new album Blackout! 2 and then progressed onto older hits from the original Blackout! along with tracks from their solo careers. One of the most notable songs from the night however came when Method Man dropped M.E.T.H.O.D Man from the Enter the 36 Chambers album he did with the Wu. At the time, it seemed to be the song that everyone was most keen for and when it hit, it had a euphoric sensation on the crowd where everyone felt that they were together.

One of the stand out factors of the Method Man and Redman gig was, unlike many other hip hop shows that I have seen, the two MC’s really strived for crowd participation. Rather than hitting the stage, rhyming a verse from each song, smiling for the cameras and leaving, Meth and Red really played and toyed the crowd as well as providing some insight into what they thought about “phony ass rappers”.

About an hour into the show, Method man and Redman took a break and fellow Wu tang rapper Streetlife hit the stage and preformed some of his solo work. This was then followed by the DJ’s doing a dedication to Jam Master Jay in the form of some old school scratching and beat juggling which has become all too rare these days. Meth and Redman returned to some dedications to the deceased rappers and performers such as Michael Jackson, 2Pac, Biggie, and a very special dedication to the late Wu father ODB by playing his immortal classic Shimmy Shimmy Ya. The show ended on a high note with the 2000 hit Da Rockwilder and then the MC’s said their sweet fair wells by hinting at a How High 2 movie being in the works.

All in all the Method man and Redman show was probably one of the greatest hip hop shows I have seen as it played out like an old time buddy movie. Meth and Red could be seen as hip hop’s answer to the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy, Albert and Costello, and to a more obvious extent, a modern day Cheech and Chong. One of the things they managed to nail was getting the right balance between the rawness of the GZA’s one man one DJ show, and the glitz and glamour of Ghostface’s entourage show. My final verdict in relations to all the allegations of people saying that hip hop is dead and music of the past is that it is not – you just need to know where to look for it.