Review: De La Soul (@WeAreDeLaSoul) Live At @Nozstock 2015.

The job — Go see an icon­ic Hip Hop group (vet­er­ans of over two dec­ades) head­line a Fest­iv­al on a Sat­urday night, take qual­ity pho­tos and write up a review. Accep­ted.
The Act — Wu-Tang.
Three days before the start of the fest­iv­al, Wu-Tang pull out with no explan­a­tion.
How­ever, there is a back-up plan by the organ­isers (shout out to them for react­ing in the best pos­sible way).
The job is still On.
Go see an icon­ic Hip Hop group (vet­er­ans of over two dec­ades) head­line a Fest­iv­al on a Sat­urday night, take qual­ity pho­tos and write up a review.
The Act — De La Soul.
My ini­tial dis­ap­point­ment turned once more into excite­ment. Hav­ing seen both acts before, I knew that as far apart in many ways from each oth­er as they were, both would have equally been top qual­ity per­form­ances. In some ways, De La Soul were more suited to Noz­stock, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the crowd and oth­er acts. Wu-Tang would have been awe­some I’m sure, but were — for me — a sur­prise inclu­sion in the first place.
So after tak­ing in the sur­round­ings and lovely atmo­sphere of Noz­stock, cap­tur­ing images on my digit­al SLR, I waited stage-side for De La, and right on sched­ule — around 11:30pm — they hit the stage. Maseo did the sound checks and kicked off with some dope 90’s beats before Posdnu­os and Dave began address­ing the eager crowd. They began with some shout-outs — J Dilla (R.I.P.) and fel­low Nat­ive Tongue-ers, A Tribe Called Quest. Award Tour had the crowd boun­cing! Being the true Gents that they are, they made an announce­ment on behalf of Wu-Tang, half-apo­lo­gising (without know­ing their reas­ons for the no-show) but get­ting a big cheer for their fel­low New York­ers from a very for­giv­ing crowd.

For the best part of an hour they went through their dis­co­graphy, enter­tained, con­versed and put on a great show. True to form they brought the best out of their audi­ence — inti­cing them to make the most noise. A stand­ard De La act, Posdnu­os say­ing his side of the crowd were the loudest, where­ast Dave claimed that the party was def­in­itely on his side start­ing a noise war. All good fun. Speak­ing of good, Feel Good Inc had the people in rap­tures, Sat­urday had them buzz­ing.
On a per­son­al note, I was a little dis­ap­poin­ted that I did­n’t hear Eye Know (a per­son­al favour­ite of mine), and quite sur­prised that they nev­er per­formed Ring Ring Ring, but I’m sure they had their reas­ons.
Embar­rass­ing moment for me about half way through when they told every­one to get their hands up — even “you guys with your cam­er­as at the front.…f‑ck the cam­er­as, f‑ck work! Just put your hands up and have a good time!”
The crowd, huge cred­it to them, were bril­liant through­out — vocal, ener­get­ic, sup­port­ive. A lot of them were young, per­haps even too young to remem­ber or even know much of De La’s (early) work. Dave addressed this by say­ing some­thing along the lines of, “Don’t worry if you’re not famil­i­ar with all the songs or know all the words, we just want y’all to have funtonight.”
And that we all cer­tainly did.
The D.A.I.S.Y. age is well and truly alive.

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Ranj Bans

Ranjit Bans is a Pro­fes­sion­al Pho­to­graph­er work­ing at www.magiclifephotography.co.uk, a fath­er of two and Hip Hop enthu­si­ast from the back end of the 80’s through to the 90’s.

Latest posts by Ranj Bans (see all)

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• Review: De La Soul (@WeAreDeLaSoul) Live At @Nozstock 2015. — Octo­ber 2, 2015
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