REVIEW| EMOTIONAL ORANGES (@emotionalorange) BRING THEIR ENIGMATIC GROOVE TO LONDON’S XOYO

EOI Am Hip Hop Magazine are always appre­ci­at­ive of music that is not afraid to break out of the safe zone by being unapo­lo­get­ic with their sound. After hear­ing Emo­tion­al Oranges’ debut pro­ject, The Juice: Vol. I, we instantly could tell that the duo are not shy to express them­selves son­ic­ally and men­tally.

We jumped at the chance to see the groovy, R&B group per­form their first gig in the UK last week. This con­cert was part their Chill Baby, Chill tour of North Amer­ica and Europe, which is also their first per­form­ing tour. The Los Angeles based out­fit brought a uniquely vibrant exper­i­ence right from the start with ener­get­ic per­form­ances from their mov­ing album.

The iden­tity of the lead­ing duo has remained elu­sive to date, with the lead lady cham­pi­on­ing Daft Punk inspired head­wear as she entered the stage. Her power­ful voice was enough to grip the the audi­ence as the sold out XOYO crowd were sent into to a soul­ful frenzy with their song, Motion. The male lead soon joined his band mate, com­ple­ment­ing her with his more smooth­er tones, offer­ing a per­fect melod­ic bal­ance backed by an unmatched groovy bass.

The per­form­ance took a more warm­ing turn as the band per­formed their softer track, Corners Of My Mind. This mood was accom­pan­ied by a wel­comed sur­prise set of old school rendi­tions. Ja Rule & Ashanti’s Always on Time was covered in the most hon­our­able way pos­sible before Cas­sie’s Me & U was also paid trib­ute to.

The group brought the night back to their pro­ject with classy rendi­tions of their tunes, Good To Me and Built That Way. The crowd were left chant­ing “OE, OE, OE” before the group thanked their band mem­bers and the fans. The per­formers walked off the stage for the hyped crowd to chant “encore”. The band duly respon­ded by com­ing out to a huge ova­tion once again. They chose their last per­form­ance to be of their one of their lead­ing tracks, Per­son­al. This was the per­fect choice to end the night with its massively uplift­ing vibe.

We are so glad to be part of the inaug­ur­a­tion of this fas­cin­at­ing col­lect­ive as they are set to become major play­ers with­in the R&B scene. We will def­in­itely be keep­ing an eye out for their future pro­jects and their next tour this side of the pond.

The Juice: Vol. I is avail­able now on all pop­u­lar stream­ing plat­forms. Fol­low Emo­tion­al Oranges on Ins­tagram.

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About Sumit Singh

Sumit Singh
Sumit is a historian from Croydon, South London. He specialises in music, art, culture and mango lassi.