Review: @PharoaheMonch With the Ezra collective and DJ Boogie Blind Live @TheJazzCafe

Phar­oahe Monch with the Ezra col­lect­ive and DJ Boo­gie Blind, sup­por­ted by MC Sho­gun at the Jazz café

Start­ing the show was Scotland’s very own MC Sho­gun, and boy did he deliv­er! Amazed at how his flows seemed to nev­er run out of breath, his accent gave him a nice edge on his deliv­ery. He was hon­est, humble and his con­tent was deep and we were all feel­ing it, espe­cially his track, ‘Vul­can’ the crowd was hyped! We were ready for Phar­oahe Monch! Open­ing the show with Bad MF, it was on!!

DJ Boo­gie Blind on the decks delivered bad news of a broken mix­er, but even that would not stop this show, Monch on per­form­ing his incred­ible 13^th show at the Jazz café, wanted to do some­thing a little bit dif­fer­ent this time so bought on stage with him London’s very tal­en­ted Jazz musi­cians — The Ezra Col­lect­ive.  This cre­ated a beau­ti­ful atmo­sphere with big smiles, it was all love! On sev­er­al occa­sions Monch reques­ted the light­ing tech­ni­cians turn down the lights so we could feel the music.

Monch shouted, ‘who is free! Not phys­ic­ally, but men­tally free’ and the crowd went wild! Men­tion­ing many things had no gone so well in 2016, Monch said in his opin­ion the real prob­lem was police bru­tal­ity and it was real. This lead nicely onto, ‘Fuck the Police’ by N.W.A which really got every­one hyped acknow­ledging this injustice in society.

One thing I really respect about artists is those who pay homage to those who have come before them, their influ­ences. Monch asked the crowd who was a fan of hip hop more to the point who was a fan of music full stop and then played trib­utes to all the greats we have lost includ­ing Dav­id Bowie, Prince, Nate Dog, and Phife Dwag from a Tribe Called Quest which was very much appreciated.

Monch addressed addic­tions and that there were many types of addi­tion, ‘I’m addicted to bad rela­tion­ships’, he told every­one strug­gling with their addi­tions to just, ‘Feel the music’ which many of us so to escape real­ity, it is our haven.

Dur­ing the per­form­ance of ‘Times2’ which deals with the top­ic of depres­sion, Monch bought a prop gun onto the stage and at the end of the track sim­u­lated shoot­ing him­self in the head. This has been the root of much con­tro­versy online since going vir­al. Wheth­er you agree or dis­agree with this visu­al imagery, it cer­tainly made a point of address­ing the sad truths of depres­sion induced suicide.

Anoth­er high­light for me per­son­ally was hear­ing, ‘Apache’, bboys and bgirls will know! They just let it play out. Then if we weren’t hype enough, we heard the epic, ‘Simon Says’ and the crowd went wild jump­ing around!

It was funny Monch stated this was a hard­core show and he was thank­ful for the estro­gen in the room which was bal­an­cing things out, many ladies of hip hop as myself were lov­ing the show, it was real.

Fin­ish­ing the show with Light, as Monch left the stage, the crowd would not leave hop­ing he would return to continue.

This was my first time see­ing Phar­oahe Monch Live and I really enjoyed the show, he was ooz­ing artistry and I look for­ward to going back to listen­ing to his back cata­logue with a dif­fer­ent ear and great­er appreciation.

Phar­oahe Monch: http://www.pharoahe.com/

Ezra Col­lect­ive: https://soundcloud.com/ezracollective

MC Sho­gun: https://soundcloud.com/shogun_official