Review: @PharoaheMonch With the Ezra collective and DJ Boogie Blind Live @TheJazzCafe

By Faizah Cyanide • On Reviews ,

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Phar­oahe Monch with the Ezra col­lect­ive and DJ Boo­gie Blind, sup­por­ted by MC Sho­gun at the Jazz café

Start­ing the show was Scotland’s very own MC Sho­gun, and boy did he deliv­er! Amazed at how his flows seemed to nev­er run out of breath, his accent gave him a nice edge on his deliv­ery. He was hon­est, humble and his con­tent was deep and we were all feel­ing it, espe­cially his track, ‘Vul­can’ the crowd was hyped! We were ready for Phar­oahe Monch! Open­ing the show with Bad MF, it was on!!

DJ Boo­gie Blind on the decks delivered bad news of a broken mix­er, but even that would not stop this show, Monch on per­form­ing his incred­ible 13th show at the Jazz café, wanted to do some­thing a little bit dif­fer­ent this time so bought on stage with him London’s very tal­en­ted Jazz musi­cians — The Ezra Col­lect­ive.  This cre­ated a beau­ti­ful atmo­sphere with big smiles, it was all love! On sev­er­al occa­sions Monch reques­ted the light­ing tech­ni­cians turn down the lights so we could feel the music.

Monch shouted, ‘who is free! Not phys­ic­ally, but men­tally free’ and the crowd went wild! Men­tion­ing many things had no gone so well in 2016, Monch said in his opin­ion the real prob­lem was police bru­tal­ity and it was real. This lead nicely onto, ‘Fuck the Police’ by N.W.A which really got every­one hyped acknow­ledging this injustice in society.

One thing I really respect about artists is those who pay homage to those who have come before them, their influ­ences. Monch asked the crowd who was a fan of hip hop more to the point who was a fan of music full stop and then played trib­utes to all the greats we have lost includ­ing Dav­id Bowie, Prince, Nate Dog, and Phife Dwag from a Tribe Called Quest which was very much appreciated.

Monch addressed addic­tions and that there were many types of addi­tion, ‘I’m addicted to bad rela­tion­ships’, he told every­one strug­gling with their addi­tions to just, ‘Feel the music’ which many of us so to escape real­ity, it is our haven.pmgun

Dur­ing the per­form­ance of ‘Times2’ which deals with the top­ic of depres­sion, Monch bought a prop gun onto the stage and at the end of the track sim­u­lated shoot­ing him­self in the head. This has been the root of much con­tro­versy online since going vir­al. Wheth­er you agree or dis­agree with this visu­al imagery, it cer­tainly made a point of address­ing the sad truths of depres­sion induced suicide.

Anoth­er high­light for me per­son­ally was hear­ing, ‘Apache’, bboys and bgirls will know! They just let it play out. Then if we weren’t hype enough, we heard the epic, ‘Simon Says’ and the crowd went wild jump­ing around!

It was funny Monch stated this was a hard­core show and he was thank­ful for the estro­gen in the room which was bal­an­cing things out, many ladies of hip hop as myself were lov­ing the show, it was real.

Fin­ish­ing the show with Light, as Monch left the stage, the crowd would not leave hop­ing he would return to continue.

This was my first time see­ing Phar­oahe Monch Live and I really enjoyed the show, he was ooz­ing artistry and I look for­ward to going back to listen­ing to his back cata­logue with a dif­fer­ent ear and great­er appreciation.

Phar­oahe Monch: http://www.pharoahe.com/

Ezra Col­lect­ive: https://soundcloud.com/ezracollective

MC Sho­gun: https://soundcloud.com/shogun_official

 

 

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Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clin­ic­al research by pro­fes­sion and has been an avid Hip Hop lov­er since the early 90’s, hav­ing cre­ated her own Hip Hop event, ‘Breakin’ Bound­ar­ies’ in the early 2000’s which was pre­dom­in­antly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al events pro­moters and dan­cers to inspire oth­ers through this artform.

About Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clinical research by profession and has been an avid Hip Hop lover since the early 90's, having created her own Hip Hop event, 'Breakin' Boundaries' in the early 2000's which was predominantly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with several international events promoters and dancers to inspire others through this artform.