Killa Kela Ocean Rooms, Brighton
Killa Kela has a massive following in Brighton, especially with the students in town so this night was kind of a post exam party for them. Being only £1 before 10:30 it was bound to be packed out.
As we arrived I could see despite it being a Tuesday night the venue was queued around the block. After queuing for about half an hour you had the choice of either the ‘live lounge’ upstairs or the ‘Funkton suite’ downstairs. We chose upstairs and already on stage were the Gobfathers a.k.a. Beardyman & Emphisize. They put on an amusing MC and beatbox set, chatting on everything from club culture & class A’s to west country farm life. It was hard to tell if they were appreciated by everyone but I found them pretty entertaining not to mention original.
Once their set had finished there was a mad dash downstairs to get good positions for the Spit Kingdom crews performance. Although I have been to a number of hip hop nights at The Ocean Rooms I have never seen it so rammed and everyone was determined to get to the front, including me.
We were greeted by MC Trip, one of the Spit kingdom crew. He was the hype man and got the crowd ready to receive Kela and company. He appeared after a few minutes accompanied by the lovely Charlise Rookwood. They began with some of Kela’s tracks from ‘The Permanent Marker’ showing off his outstanding creative talents. They then progressed onto samples of tracks such as Snoops ‘Drop it like its hot’, Fugees ‘Ready or not’, Kelis and many more. Kela also did the classic tuning of a radio act which was dope.
I don’t know whether I was alone but I was surprised to hear Kela actually singing. I expected some emcing but he was full on singing, and I have to say he was damn good. The three really compliment each others styles and work well together. With Trips sometimes D&B style emcing, Kela’s beats and Rookwoods excellent and varied vocals the show flowed nicely and kept the crowd lively.
As the night went on the show got heavier with the crowd lapping up the sounds of Kelas Drum & Bass beats. After about half an hour though he looked ready to pass out and handed the stage over to Rookwood and Trip to continue with the madness. Unfortunately this was time for me to leave, with only 5 hours til I had to be up for work and a half hour ride home, I took the sensible option.
Its crazy to think that Killa Kela came from the small village of Billingshurst not far from my home town of Horsham. He has achieved global recognition for his talents and rightly so. Any chance you get to see Kela or his crew don’t pass it up. It was a heavy night with the Friday night feeling. If only it was a Friday!
- Matt T
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