Review: Pharoahe Monch (@pharoahemonch) Live @TheGarageHQ London

PHAR­OAHE MONCH LIVE AT GAR­AGE (8^TH MARCH 2016) WITH EZRA COL­LECT­IVE & DJ BOO­GIE BLIND

LIVE SHOW REVIEW BY WASIF SAYYED.

Top Trumps (No Donald)

If emcees were attrib­uted scores based on dis­tinct rhym­ing cat­egor­ies and sor­ted into top tumps cards, Phar­oahe Monch would argu­ably be the most power­ful card in the set.

Dur­ing a career span­ning four solo albums, three group albums and a lib­rary of guest col­lab­or­a­tions, Phar­oahe Monch has exhib­ited mas­tery via dex­trous rhyme flows that few oth­er emcees can rep­lic­ate; vicious mic put­downs; intro­spect­ive emo­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions; sin­cere social com­ment­ary; killer chanted hooks and immacu­lately sung chor­uses over a wide range of beat styles. This show exhib­ited all these traits.

Free­dom

Enter­ing the stage to the Ezra Col­lect­ive band’s expertly cory­bant­ic styl­ings, Phar­oahe Monch pro­claimed that he is “a mix­ture of Mar­cus Gar­vey, Miles Dav­is, and Bob Mar­ley” from the album WAR’s song “Assas­sins” to a rap­tur­ous audi­ence. Hype momentum was car­ried by the expertly inter­pol­ated live ver­sion of “Agent Orange” and the defi­ant and happy “Fuck You” to the police from the Train­ing Day soundtrack. The lat­ter was just an early protest against police bru­tal­ity, which received centre stage later in the set with a sequence fea­tur­ing BDP’s “Sound of Da Police,” NWA’s “Fuck the Police” and J Dilla’s song of the same title. This segue, which was intro­duced poignantly by Monch high­light­ing the dis­pens­ab­il­ity of Black lives at the hands of vacu­ous police bru­tal­ity was closed out by a rendi­tion of “Clap”, a ded­ic­a­tion to the vic­tims and their fam­il­ies, hon­oured by the audi­ence via their com­mem­or­ative syn­chron­ised hand clapping.

Gen­er­ally the mood through­out the night was excit­ing and upbeat with Phar­oahe look­ing like he hasn’t enjoyed rhym­ing this much in years. Fero­city was in high sup­ply via the hype­ness of songs amongst oth­ers such as “Right Here”, “Dam­age” (the third in the ‘song from the per­spect­ive of a bul­let tri­logy’), and of course the closer of the night “Simon Says” one of rap’s most lauded anthems, ubi­quit­ous with any Hip-Hop show that needs an adren­al­in shot and a sym­phony of voices holler­ing “bo bo bo bo bo!” and throw­ing their sets up. “Bad MF” was an over­com­pens­at­ing miss-step how­ever with its power chords, and brag­gado­cios and abras­ive hook.

Live and Direct

Pos­it­ively, Ezra Col­lect­ive did an incred­ibly job of doing justice to Phar­oahe Monch’s cata­logue via phe­nom­en­al under­stand­ing of Hip-Hop grooves and swing , and the rest of the crew’s instru­ment­al expert­ise adding a wel­come dynam­ic that is often abused when Hip-Hop artists shoe­horn a live set up into their per­form­ances. Their inter­mis­sion fea­tured ver­sion of Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta”, was a bench­mark in per­form­ing cov­ers where the ori­gin­al art is hon­oured but a new ver­sion is com­pletely owned. Femi’s drum­ming on Grime inter­pol­a­tions was a sight to behold. 

PTSD

Phar­oahe mil­it­ary jack­et clad returned to the red lit stage, with just DJ Boo­gie Blind hold­ing down the PA and no band intro­duced anoth­er emo­tion­ally charged sec­tion of the night. From the album “PTSD,” Phar­oahe Monch’s the­at­ric­al but not melo­dra­mat­ic per­form­ance “Time2” saw him put a lazer toy gun (à la the album cov­er) to his head as he sparred with his inner demons on the men­tal health themed “Time2”.

“We fight demons from our past only to face new monsters
I ask, are we comatose or unconscious?
My top spin’s per­petu­al, make the connection
You sleep cause real­ity bites; incep­tion” – Phar­oahe Monch, “Time2.”

Now illu­min­ated by gamma green light­ing, Phar­oahe Monch test­i­fied to the power of addic­tion (wheth­er it be sub­stance or the addic­tion to mak­ing bad decisions) with soul­ful singing and a con­ver­sa­tion­al flow of “Broken Again.”

The DJ and the Culture

DJ Boo­gie Blind did a bril­liant job of affirm­ing the back-bone of the cul­ture being rooted in the DJ with furi­ous scratch­ing and a seem-less mix­ing of the back­drops. Phar­oahe Monch and Boo­gie Blind took time to appre­ci­ate the beau­ti­ful music that informs Hip-Hop’s son­ic pal­let by play­ing the Aretha Frank­lin songs sampled by Mos Def for Ms Phat Booty and Pharoahe’s own col­lab­or­a­tion with Styles P “My Life” before mov­ing into the song itself. A homage to Hip-Hop’s deceased Nate Dogg was the play­ing of “Next Epis­ode,” which led into “Oh No.” One won­ders wheth­er Phar­oahe real­ised at the time how what seem like quickly jot­ted rhymes on Da Rock­wilder pro­duced Rawkus Records era song would end up becom­ing so revered and time­less. Not a single per­son refused to dance for this hit!

Tropes for the Ladies

Desire’s ode to love and intim­acy “So Good” was intro­duced by DJ Boo­gie Blind as a “let’s do some­thing for the ladies,” which is an annoy­ing trope too fre­quent at Hip-Hop shows. There were sev­er­al ladies in attend­ance who were dan­cing, head-nod­ding and enjoy­ing the set from the get-go so such pat­ron­ising sen­ti­ments are per­haps a reas­on that more women don’t make up the num­bers at gigs like this. In the words of a woman I was with: “I like rap-rap songs like “What it is” as much as songs like “So Good” so there’s need for that sort of intro­duc­tion.” Phar­oahe Monch is a reflect­ive per­son who seems to exude genu­ine empathy so it’s some­thing that could be addressed in the fore­see­able future.

Hard­core Encore

Fol­low­ing the clos­ing “Simon Says”, Phar­oahe returned to the stage to sur­prise pleas­antly with a hark back to Organ­ized Kon­fuzion days with the phe­nom­en­al flow show­cas­ing of “Bring it On” and “Stress.” Phar­oahe Monch has detailed about how his debil­it­at­ing asthma was the reas­on he craf­ted intric­ate rhyme schemes and pat­terns, which stand the test of time by still being evid­ently ahead of the time and very few have caught up. The night’s ulti­mate closer was the lush “The Light.” This was a com­plete Hip-Hop show­case with an ill DJ, tight band and phe­nom­en­al emcee who laid out a plat­ter of a vast dis­co­graphy to remain argu­ably the best live emcee in the world. He’s the sort of dude you would securely and hap­pily have babysit your chil­dren one even­ing, and then ‘GET THE FUCK UP’ for the next to bring the noise.

 

By Wasif Sayyed [#WasifS­cion]