Review: CJ Fly at @TheJazzCafe (@FLYestintheeERA )

On stage promptly at nine o’clock, backed by a lone DJ, CJ Fly informs the crowd his clothes haven’t turned up at the air­port. Though he doesn’t allow this dampen his mood, and sport­ing new garms jumps in to “Eye­talian Fren­chip”- a love story in which Fly finds him­self in a rela­tion­ship with two women at the same time– what a pickle eh! “How did I get in to this love tri­angle? This love tri­angle”.. Our man resigns with a ‘could care less’ atti­tude to his status as a lothario, in which his libid­inal impulses are ful­filled at the expense of vir­tue in char­ac­ter– “fuck it I don’t give a shit– I’m infam­ous for dat­ing chicks”.

The crowd seem to be enjoy­ing them­selves as they repeat the hook. CJ Fly is best on his new­er tracks, in which the Pro Era mem­ber makes his MCing inten­tions clear to peers and fans alike on “Rais­ing the Bar” and “Do it for the love”. Both tracks have the crowd wav­ing their arms and boun­cing to the bass drum and rolling synths. Fans go wild when Pro Era pal JOEY BADA$$ is called on Face­Time to say ‘hello’. CJ Fly gets in the crowd for the clos­ing track and poses for selfies to everyone’s delight. I was sur­prised when the lights came up after this num­ber, sig­nalling the end of the set. It’s only quarter to ten.

The small but ded­ic­ated crowd don’t mind though and are con­tent with CJ Fly’s whistle stop tour of his rel­at­ively small back cata­logue. I over­hear the sound engin­eer talk­ing to bar staff, who is less happy, as he’s now expec­ted to enter­tain a crowd of Hiphop­pas until clos­ing at half ten with his lim­ited col­lec­tion of rap. CJ Fly hav­ing embarked on a US tour and now play­ing in Europe, is hon­ing his MC skills in front of live audi­ences. With more solo releases anti­cip­ated later this year, I expect we’ll be see­ing lots more good from this chap in the near future. Stay tuned.

DJ Euan Brown

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