REVIEW: GHOSTFACE KILLAH (@GhostfaceKillah) LIVE IN LONDON

Sunday 24^th Septem­ber saw U.S. hip hop roy­alty grace Clapham’s The Grand, with the one and only Ghost­face Kil­lah of the mighty Wu Tang Clan.

Open­ing up pro­ceed­ings and first to try to rouse the sleepy sunday crowd was High Focus Records’ Flipt­rix, part of the Four Owls and a main­stay of the label that has been a major influ­ence in the ongo­ing reju­ven­a­tion of the UK hip hop scene over the last few years. Backed by DJ Molotov, Flipt­rix held the stage, spit­ting bars from a hand­ful of the biggest tracks from his last two LPs includ­ing ‘See The Sun’ and ‘The High Way’. Fit­tingly rep­ping for The Four Owls, he ended the set with his verse from the Preemo pro­duced banger ‘Think Twice’.

Fol­low­ing Fliptrix’s open­ing set there were sev­er­al short show­case cameos from artists that were part of Ghost’s entour­age, most of whom were rel­at­ively unknown acts. This included female new­comer from San Ant­o­nio, Trice Hood, the UK based artist Paperz, Wu’s hard talk­ing Ger­man con­nect Joe Young, and Brooklyn’s ShaneX­Sharps, who is one to keep an eye on for the future if the sound of his acapella on the night and his latest video ‘I Come From That’ is any­thing to go by.

Before Ghosts big entrance, his DJ named Tech­ni­cian let off a swift vol­ley of clas­sic tracks mostly made up of legendary New York bangers includ­ing ( the soon to per­form in Lon­don with the Juice Crew) Biz Markie’s ‘Just a Friend’ and ‘Phone Tap’ by The Firm (who just cel­eb­rated their 20^th anniversary). It is always a treat hear­ing your favour­ite bars over dif­fer­ent clas­sic beats so it was a joy to hear Kil­lah Priest, although with a slightly gruff voice, totally smash the granny out of the mic with some of his best bars over clas­sic beats such as Pharcyde’s ‘Passing Me By’ and Big Pun’s ‘Beware’, all delivered in his trade­mark dom­in­ant style and dis­tinct­ive tone.

A qual­ity show on a Sunday night is always a treat. How­ever, most people are spent by Sunday after a rowdy fri­day or sat­urday, so any­one put­ting a show on on a Sunday would always do well to rouse a crowd up to full energy levels. And that is exactly what Ghost­face man­aged to do.

When he did emerged on stage to the clas­sic Bad­boy Enter­tain­ment pro­duced ‘Spe­cial Deliv­ery’, he spat his bars to per­fec­tion and soon we were thrown into a set filled with some of his most power­ful tracks and some of the Clan’s greatest hits.

For a sec­tion Ghost­face ran through a few tracks from the Wu Tang Clan’s first album, ‘Enter The 36 Cham­bers’. At one point there was even a call for onstage par­ti­cip­a­tion and a ran­dom female and male were plucked from the crowd to respect­ively spit Meth­od Man and Ol’Dirty Bastard’s bars from ‘Pro­tect Ya Neck’, with the ran­dom lady doing so well on the mic she drew a huge applause.

Spit­ting his verses from ‘Ice Cream’, ‘Mighty Healthy’ and ‘Tearz’, the crowd star­ted to vibes and the energy peaked once that moody bass­line and jar­ring sample from ‘4^th Cham­ber’ dropped, with the crowd turn­ing to a mosh like state while Ghost and Priest spat their time hon­oured bars. Ghost also squeezed in his verses from ‘Back Like That’ and ‘Cher­chez La Ghost’ much to the crowds’ ecstasy.

There was even a moment to appre­ci­ate Al Green, with the crowd join­ing Ghost, Priest and Tech­ni­cian in bel­low­ing out the sweet hook of ‘Love and Happiness’.

Its great to know that mem­bers of the Wu are still pro­du­cing the kind of moments that help keep the fact in mind that Ghost­face Kil­lah always has and always will be regarded as a fierce live per­former and a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al.  Nights like this show why Wu Tang is Forever.