Talib Kweli 93 Feet East I’d been sick for 3 days before the Thursday, and chilling in bed seemed like a good idea, until a combination of some nice herbal tings and a verbal battering for being a lazy raas off of my missus prompted me into action. 45 minutes later, we disembarked from the Crunkmobile, I got mad lean, and then Kobi ushered us in to the club, an establishment which I believe to be home of an interesting phenomenon, namely that of the Hoxton Twat….. Early on EV-ON and Def Tex held the British end up. EV-ON’s infectious enthusiasm won the crowd over early into her short set and Def Tex, after opening with a heavy a capella piece, ploughed straight into the jams from their ‘Serene Bug’ LP, bringing the live band out halfway through the set to make sure the place was properly turned out The heads had certainly turned up for this one, and the place was rammed full of crew ready for one of Brooklyn’s finest to come through with the first of his UK appearances promoting his new album, ’Quality’. Which it is by the way. Anyway, I’m like, yeah, this will be a nice chilled night of mellow consciousness from my man Kweli, but then I should have known better. By the time DJ Chaps (of the 12 Inch Assasins) had got the crowd hyped, he came through busting ‘Rush’ and ‘Get By’. He also had a backing vocalist in the shape of Tracey Moore from the Jazzyfatnastees nicing up the new album tracks which incidentally are heavy on the soulful female vocals. Almost all that soul was, however, lost through the muddy sounding P.A. I personally reckon the system in the club is dog toffee, far too much bass and not enough on top (Extra P suffered from this a few weeks before as well). The geezer is proper versatile – we even got a phat freestyle (complete with amusing Mystikal reference), and classic upon classic pounded from the speakers, ‘Definition’, ‘Respiration', and a blinding version of ‘Good Mourning’ meant that I was happy, and the new tunes sounded dope and went down well with the crowd. He proved once and for all that he could do it without the hot Hi-Tek on the production tip. Brooklyn was most definitely in the house, and all kinds of craziness kicked off after the set had finished – Kweli declared that he was going to party at China White’s if anyone wanted to join him, to which the crowd put up a protest and managed to entice him into staying put. He invited everyone onto the stage, took the piss out of headnodding ‘underground’ cats, much to my amusement, and then his dj started blasting joints off the new Jigga album……chaos, one of the best gigs I’ve been too in a while. Oh, and by the way, Chaps is a very sick puppy on the one’s and two’s. He had juggles galore baby…..mad styles. If you didn’t go, gutted basically, because it was quality all the way basically. Word. - Merkin © ukhh.com 1999 - 2002