Review: ONE LOVE With Congo Natty, Logic, Amy True, Skibadee & Harry Shotta, Mighty Moe & DJ Steady, Rodney P & Guests

Thursday 28^th Septem­ber saw a char­ity event at Brix­ton Jamm set up by the straight talk­ing Lon­don rap vet­er­an Logic & The People’s Army. 

All pro­ceeds from the event, includ­ing a raffle for Carib­bean meals at the deli­cious Turtle Bay res­taur­ant went to the One Love Thera­peut­ic Cen­ter in Ethiopia, a day care cen­ter that provides pas­tor­al, edu­ca­tion­al and med­ic­al ser­vices for vul­ner­able chil­dren with dis­ab­il­it­ies, all in a coun­try that still has with­in it a cul­ture of turn­ing a blind eye to such children. 

On the bill was a feast of music well worthy the £15 tick­et price, includ­ing King­pin and Frshrz, Rod­ney P, Mighty Mo of Heart­less Crew fame, Amy True, and Mav­er­ick Sabre. Head­lining the even­ing’s enter­tain­ment was the power­ful duo of Skibadee and Harry Shotta, powered by the quint­es­sen­tial jungle/DnB selec­tion of legendary DJ Congo Natty.

The Thursday even­ing got off to a slow start, though with around 200 tick­ets sold in advance the full fest­iv­it­ies were bound to start at some point. Jazz T as always held it down on the decks before things got mov­ing, spin­ning a nice selec­tion of old sku tracks includ­ing Das EFX’s ‘Real Hip Hop’ and a couple of clas­sic Gang­starr tracks.

First of the live acts to bless the stage was King­pin, who spat a hand­ful of verses warm­ing up the mic for guests Frshrz who impressed with a couple of tracks in pro­mo­tion of their new self titled EP, a record that fea­tures not only Rod­ney P and Logic by also Si Philli of PLC / Philli n Dotz fame.

RU1FAM affil­i­ate and Peoples Army sol­dier, Amy True took the stage shortly after, with her deli­cious vocals and pos­it­ive lyr­i­cism set things up nicely for guest Mav­er­ick Sabre. The crowd was summoned to gath­er by the front of the stage for a short and intim­ate acous­tic set from the Hack­ney born Irish­man, famed for his excel­lent cov­ers and fea­tures with Chase & Status. The room fell silent while he pro­ceeded to enthrall the huddled crowd with a short selec­tion of songs that would­n’t have been out of place at a folk/roots fest­iv­al includ­ing a sweet per­form­ance of ‘We Don’t Know’.

Next up was legend of the scene and ori­gin­al UK split­ter Rod­ney P, with Logic back­ing him up for a brief jaunt on stage that included a rendi­tion of ‘Peaches’ and the bouncy good vibes of ‘The Nice Up’ and ‘Live Up’. Swiftly after­wards, Mighty Mo & Dj Steady stepped up the tempo and came through with some bars backed by big­ger bass, a fit­ting pre­lude for what was about to come.

Congo Natty had dis­creetly stepped up behind the wheels of steel and lit a stick of incense whilst Skibadee and Harry Shotta took centre stage. Congo con­tin­ued his won­der­ful tra­di­tion of play­ing a couple of Bob Mar­ley songs at the start of his set, with Redemp­tion Song and One Love being the songs of choice on the even­ing, encour­aging a fur­ther sense of unity between mem­bers of the crowd as many bel­lowed out the well known lyrics.

And then, before we even knew it, the whole room was thrown into a feast of furi­ously delivered Brit­ish club lyr­i­cism, lacing the clas­sic jump up DnB / Jungle rid­dims expertly selec­ted by Congo Natty. For the last hour or so of the even­ing every­one was get­ting prop­erly stuck in, with two of the most cel­eb­rated MCs of our gen­er­a­tion smash­ing it out as they always do. Com­bined with Congo Natty, a true guard­i­an of the Jungle / Jump Up scene, the trio could­n’t fail to set it off and get Brix­ton Jamm rolling. Every­body went home happy, and all in the aid of a good cause.

Big Up all the per­formers and the crowd for mak­ing it a wicked Thursday night dance.