Last time Lupe Fiasco played Sydney he rocked the Enmore Theatre to its foundations. Just over one year later he was back for round two. Without a new album to showcase this time around, how was he planning on keeping the set fresh? The uncomfortably hot night’s entertainment kicked off with sets from South Australia’s Lowrider, followed by Melbourne’s Phrase ...before the lights went dim.

A spotlight came down on a lone guitarist playing the opening bars to Lupe’s latest single Shining Down. Through the haze of the smoke machines Lupe emerged dressed in a black military style jacket with black shades. The band kept building and building the start of Shining Down until finally Lupe cut loose all over the stage. Lupe live is an entirely different beast compared to Lupe on record. His band is fundamentally a rock band playing Hip Hop beats, they turn the Hip Hop sound on its head while Lupe manages to work the now fine line between the two sounds with amazing skill.

Shining Down was followed up with a huge version of Instrumental from his first album. Throughout the set Lupe would drop full on rock tracks between his better known album tracks and singles. Trying to shake up a set like this can often be a hit or miss scenario for a lot of performers, but If you didn’t already know that he has one of the best flows in the business, you would definitely believe that he was a rock singer after seeing this performance. I even surprised myself when I found I was comparing their sound to that of The Prodigy on more than one occasion during the set. He then gave us an inspired version of Hip Hop Saved My Life with a flow so deliberate and forceful it blurred the line between the two genres they were experimenting with even further. High Definition and Go Go Gadget Flow hit with the force of a tidal wave, he spat the latter so fast the already quick rhyming song was over in half of the time it takes to listen to it on the record, this was followed by I Gotcha. The introduction verse to Little Weapon then played out over the speakers, as the introduction ended the lights completely went out and the ominous opening bars played out to a completely darkened venue, “I Killed another man today!” and with that the Enmore’s crowd erupted! Lupe and the band had not eased up on the pedal since the opening track, so when they next played Superstar at its normal speed and ferocity it actually sounded like a slow song compared to the onslaught which we had been experiencing since note one. Lupe then played the first verse of The Cool before switching the track to Streets on Fire and bringing the set to a furious close.

The band left the stage briefly before returning for an encore which included Paris, Tokyo and the reading of a birthday card which someone had handed to Lupe from the audience. Not surprisingly the card was full of praise for the emcee, so much so that it prompted him to give a disclaimer to any waiting media that he hadn’t written it himself “I’m not that conceited”. He then finished the show with the crowd favourite Daydreams which lead into an extended jam between all the musicians in the band with Lupe acting as the conductor.
To be completely upfront, if someone had said to me beforehand that Lupe would be doing the gig on a really heavy rock tip for the night I would have been sceptical. But he absolutely blew any doubts of whether he could pull it off or not out of the water from note one. It was a huge show and Lupe and band were at their gun-slinging best. It’s happened two years in a row and with the imminent release of his Lasers album later this year, I wonder if it’s asking too much to hope that he is back next summer?