REVIEW | DJ JAZZY JEFF AT KOKO LONDON: A MASTERCLASS IN MUSICALITY

DJ Jazzy Jeff brought dec­ades of hip-hop know­ledge and turn­tab­list craft to KOKO Lon­don, mov­ing effort­lessly through hip-hop, funk, jungle, amapi­ano and UK sounds. For I Am Hip Hop, Doni Brasco watches one of the greats at work and gets some char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally dir­ect advice backstage.

There is a tempta­tion, when writ­ing about DJ Jazzy Jeff, to begin with the word legend. It is accur­ate, but it is also lazy. His place in hip-hop his­tory was secured dec­ades ago. The Grammys, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and those routines gen­er­a­tions of DJs have paused, rewound and stud­ied have already taken care of that.

What inter­ested me at KOKO was­n’t his his­tory. It was how good he is now.

As a DJ myself, the first thing that struck me was his music­al­ity. At a time when sets can feel like a race through trans­itions, edits and increas­ingly high­er tem­pos, Jazzy Jeff is com­pletely com­fort­able let­ting a record breathe. He keeps the swing of hip-hop without allow­ing the genre to restrict where he can go, and his use of the mix­er is as import­ant as the records he selects.

The echoes, cuts, scratches and flares are pre­cise rather than con­stant. He might intro­duce a sample before bring­ing in the full track, tease some­thing famil­i­ar or recog­nise that some­times a great record does­n’t need the DJ inter­fer­ing with it. There are tech­nic­ally extraordin­ary DJs who can make you feel as though you’re watch­ing a demon­stra­tion. Jazzy Jeff nev­er for­gets that he is there to move a room.

What makes that even more impress­ive is how relaxed he appears doing it. There is none of the frantic per­form­ance that can some­times accom­pany mod­ern DJ sets, where the per­son behind the decks seems to be telling the audi­ence when they should be excited. Jazzy Jeff does­n’t need to race through records to prove the depth of his lib­rary or keep push­ing the BPM to man­u­fac­ture energy. He trusts his selec­tion, his tim­ing and the crowd.

Maybe ten minutes into the set came the first moment that prop­erly caught me off guard. I heard those unmis­tak­able words: “31 seconds.”

Ori­gin Unknown’s Val­ley of the Shad­ows.

Jungle. That early. In a Jazzy Jeff set.

I was­n’t expect­ing it, but some­how it made com­plete sense. It also told me where the night could go. This was­n’t an Amer­ic­an hip-hop DJ throw­ing in a few Brit­ish records because he happened to be in Lon­don. James Brown dubs could sit along­side hip-hop, jungle could lead some­where com­pletely dif­fer­ent, amapi­ano could enter the set and UK bangers could appear without any of it feel­ing forced. The con­nec­tions came through samples, drums, bass­lines and, some­times, simply under­stand­ing what the room needed next.

From memory, Kendrick Lamar was one of the few genu­inely new­er-gen­er­a­tion rap­pers he reached for. There was no attempt to pack the set with cur­rent records simply to prove rel­ev­ance. Jazzy Jeff can move across dec­ades because his selec­tion isn’t dic­tated by when some­thing was released, but wheth­er it belongs in that moment.

Any­one with enough music can play mul­tiple genres. Mak­ing those changes feel nat­ur­al is anoth­er skill entirely. How­ever far he moved music­ally, the hip-hop swing remained.

His con­trol of KOKO was ridicu­lous. At points, the audi­ence seemed to be hanging on every click, flare, echo and drop. It’s a level of music­al con­trol Jac­ob Col­li­er would prob­ably salute, yet Jazzy Jeff rarely seemed to be for­cing a reac­tion. He knew when to build, when to change dir­ec­tion and when to leave the music alone.

Tech­no­logy has made plenty of ele­ments of DJing easi­er. Soft­ware can sync records, ana­lyse keys, remem­ber cue points and increas­ingly sug­gest what might work next. What it can­’t tell you is wheth­er a room is ready for Val­ley of the Shad­ows ten minutes into your set. That comes from instinct, exper­i­ence and years spent under­stand­ing people as much as music.

The rest of the bill deserves its flowers too. As a DJ, I know the strange com­bin­a­tion of hon­our and pres­sure that comes with see­ing your name along­side some­body you respect. You know you’ve earned your place on the fly­er, but you’re also very aware of who is play­ing next.

I arrived at KOKO at around 1am, which unfor­tu­nately meant I missed CARISTA. I’m not going to pre­tend to review a set I did­n’t hear, but I Am Hip Hop will catch her prop­erly one day. That’s a promise.

What I did walk into was Chris P Cuts, and damn, he was tight. Warm­ing up is an under­rated art. Go too hard and you spend the room’s energy too early; play too cau­tiously and you dis­ap­pear. Chris got the bal­ance right. His selec­tion was con­fid­ent, the set had its own iden­tity and he built the room without try­ing to turn a warm-up slot into a head­line per­form­ance. There must be pres­sure know­ing Jazzy Jeff is fol­low­ing you, but Chris showed exactly why he deserved to be on that bill.

And how­ever intim­id­at­ing it might be to play before Jazzy Jeff, I can­’t ima­gine many DJs volun­teer­ing to go on after him.

Dayne Jordan is anoth­er import­ant part of why Jazzy Jeff’s set works so well. Their years of tour­ing togeth­er are obvi­ous in how nat­ur­ally they work. Dayne knows when to lift the crowd, when to add some­thing and, import­antly, when to give him room. There’s none of the con­stant shout­ing that can turn an MC into com­pet­i­tion for the music. They work seam­lessly, and the mic com­ple­ments the set rather than dom­in­at­ing it.

By the lat­ter part of the night, I’d stopped ana­lys­ing indi­vidu­al trans­itions and was simply enjoy­ing where he was tak­ing us. In some ways, that’s the biggest com­pli­ment I can give the tech­nic­al side of his per­form­ance. The scratches were there, the mix­er work was excep­tion­al and the selec­tion was broad, but none of it inter­rup­ted the party to demand applause.

I’ve watched tech­nic­ally bril­liant DJs. I’ve heard incred­ible select­ors and seen turn­tab­lists per­form routines that still make abso­lutely no sense to my hands. But com­bin­ing that level of tech­nique with music­al know­ledge, selec­tion, crowd con­trol and the abil­ity to throw a prop­er party is much rarer.

As a com­plete hip-hop DJ set, Jazzy Jeff at KOKO may genu­inely be the best I’ve ever heard.

After­wards, I was lucky enough to get back­stage and ask Jazzy Jeff a quick ques­tion. I wanted to ask him some­thing that feels par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant to turn­tab­lists now. There are incred­ibly tal­en­ted DJs who have spent years devel­op­ing their craft but struggle to break through all the noise on social media. When being good at DJing and being good at get­ting an algorith­m’s atten­tion can feel like two com­pletely dif­fer­ent skills, what advice would he give them?

His answer was immediate.

“Everything is hard. If you’re wor­ried about it being hard, then don’t do it.”

That was it. No algorithm hack, no secret for­mula and no long motiv­a­tion­al speech.

And maybe that’s why the answer landed.

Turn­tab­lism is hard. Build­ing an audi­ence is hard. Mak­ing a career from music is hard. Stay­ing rel­ev­ant across gen­er­a­tions is harder still. Com­ing from some­body who has spent dec­ades doing exactly that, there was­n’t much else that needed saying.

I could listen to the KOKO set again from begin­ning to end. As a DJ, I’d prob­ably watch it again too, study­ing his hands and mix­er and try­ing to under­stand why cer­tain choices worked as well as they did.

But the greatest com­pli­ment I can give Jazzy Jeff is much simpler.

I left KOKO want­ing to go home and touch my decks.

Some­times anoth­er DJ reminds you why you star­ted doing this in the first place.

Jazzy Jeff did exactly that.

Doni Brasco
I Am Hip Hop Magazine