If Mike Skinner brought the crowd to church with hard-won honesty, Ghetts turned the Southbank Centre into a cathedral of craft. As part of Little Simz’s Meltdown Festival, he stepped onto the Royal Festival Hall stage not just as a grime pioneer, but as an artist in full command of his voice, his message, and his moment. This wasn’t just a live show, it was a lyrical ceremony, a demonstration of how UK rap can inhabit and elevate spaces usually reserved for more traditional forms of performance.
Opening with “Convo with a Cabbie,” Ghetts delivered poetry in motion, blending cinematic detail with emotional tension. The track’s conversational tone set the evening’s precedent, this wasn’t about spectacle, but storytelling. “King’s Speech” and “Purple Sky” followed, dense with double meanings and internal rhymes, as if Ghetts were building his own canon in real time. His wordplay hit like percussion, sharp and syncopated, yet never losing sight of message or mood.
The band behind him was essential, not just decoration. The arrangements gave songs like “Attention” and “Traded” a sense of weight and movement that deepened their emotional impact. This wasn’t the grime template of MC and DJ, it was orchestration in the truest sense, giving room for Ghetts’ voice to cut through, then sink back, then rise again. On “10,000 Tears” and “Proud Family,” the combination of live instrumentation and raw vulnerability brought the room to stillness, not in silence, but in awe.
Throughout the night, Ghetts shifted between preacher, poet and prophet. In “Fatherhood” and “Yes You Are,” he tapped into the intimate with remarkable ease, offering reflections that spoke as much to the Black British experience as to the human condition. “Spiritual Warfare” brought that weight into sharper focus, blending street realism with existential questioning. There’s a gravity to Ghetts’ writing that few can replicate, every line feels earned, considered, lived.
Then came the fire. “Street Politics” bristled with defiance and clarity, followed by “Little Bo Peep” which walked the line between myth and modernity, a cautionary tale wrapped in riddims. “Petals” and “Own Medicine” kept the momentum high, while “Red Wine,” featuring Max Valentine, offered a smoky, aching detour. That track in particular showed how versatile Ghetts has become, seductive, mournful, understated, yet still precise.
“Mine” and “Expiry Date” brought the energy back into the personal. These weren’t crowd-pleasers in the traditional sense, but deep cuts that hit because they revealed what so much rap tries to hide, doubt, regret, longing. And when he closed with “Double Standards,” the message was clear. This is a man who still has something urgent to say, and knows exactly how to say it.
What was most striking about this show was how unified the room felt, despite its diversity. Ghetts drew in a crowd as eclectic as any, grime day-ones, hip hop scholars, casual heads, cultural elders and younger fans just waking up to his brilliance. But in that space, all those divisions fell away.
His performance showed the unifying power of rap at its finest, rooted in lived experience, elevated by language, bound together by rhythm and soul.
As the applause rang out and the lights softened, there was no mistaking the scale of what had just taken place. Ghetts didn’t just hold his own in a space like Southbank, he transformed it. He filled it with East London grit and generational wisdom, spiritual reflection and street urgency. He made it his, and in doing so, made it ours.
Ghetts at Southbank Centre wasn’t simply a performance, it was a cultural moment. In a setting more accustomed to sonatas and scores, he brought cadence, conviction and craft, affirming that UK rap has its own classical canon in the making. This was mastery in motion, deliberate, defiant, and deeply necessary.
Micky Roots