REVIEW: LOWKEY LIVE AT THE CORONET | LONDON 2017 (@TheNarcicyst, @RafeefZiadah, @AWATEMUSIC, @MarsmUK )

The 28^th of Septem­ber at the Cor­on­et was not host­ing just any ordin­ary occa­sion. There was noth­ing ordin­ary about the audi­ence that cir­cu­lated the entire arena stretch­ing back to the Ele­phant and castle sta­tion to get into the build­ing. This per­form­ance cer­tainly didn’t come at any ordin­ary time when you con­sider the tri­als and tribu­la­tions the Lon­don pub­lic have faced recently. This was an extraordin­ary gath­er­ing of unity and wide-eyed hope against domest­ic and inter­na­tion­al oppres­sion. I walked up and down the line wit­ness­ing dif­fer­ent creeds, coun­tries and back­grounds all to cel­eb­rate and seek lib­er­a­tion from one of Hip Hop’s most tan­tal­ising emcees. I spoke to one pas­sion­ate fan that really cap­tured this unity I wit­nessed at the gig,

“You come to a gig like this and you see people with their flags from Palestine, with their hijabs, black folks, brown folks, old folks, young folks giv­ing each oth­er love show­ing each oth­er love. That kind of eth­os only hap­pens at a Lowkey gig. Few artists pull that off.”

It was how­ever unfor­tu­nate that such love was met with such hos­tile secur­ity on the night. The gar­gan­tu­an line did reflect Lowkey’s mass fol­low­ing but also rein­forced his argu­ment in his music on how people of a Muslim faith are treated with mass pre­ju­dice. Some may argue that the thor­ough search is a breath of fresh air con­sid­er­ing what happened at Arianna Grande ‘s con­cert in Manchester, but it was the atti­tude of the staff that aggrav­ated the ordeal to the point it forced an apo­logy from Lowkey when he came out. He quickly fol­lowed with the song “ter­ror­ist” which high­lights the ste­reo­type Muslim people suf­fer with every day.

For­tu­nately as a journ­al­ist for this magazine who worked extremely hard as media part­ners for this event (along­side Glob­al Fac­tion), I was able to come in earli­er than most and man­aged to wit­ness a refresh­ing tal­ent who has been sup­port­ing Lowkey for 7 years, Awate. From Erit­rea, this emcee has cham­pioned the war against dis­crim­in­a­tion in the news and has a lib­rary of tracks reflect­ing many people’s views of injustice. He was a per­fect can­did­ate to sup­port Lowkey that even­ing and you can see why Lowkey has him as a reg­u­lar sup­port for his per­form­ances and why Awate opened for the Black­star gig last Fri­day. I was extremely impressed with his vocals, not just as an emcee, but also as a sing­er. His hooks are extremely edu­cated, catchy and cap­tiv­at­ing. Reminds me of how J Cole dips in and out of singing on his tracks. This exper­i­ence motiv­ated me to meet and greet the artist back­stage, pur­chase his EP Shine Ancient and play my favour­ite track from that pro­ject on the Big Bang Show (‘Dis­placed’).  Awate was abso­lutely respons­ible for lay­ing the found­a­tions for a renowned evening.

 On the tale end of meet­ing Lowkey back­stage and shak­ing his hand, I made my way back to the crowd. The atmo­sphere was con­stantly grow­ing with love and delight as poetry met the audi­ence with Rafeef Ziadah.. Her sweet cha­risma and satire soaked the sour real­ity of her mes­sage she had for the people. The poem “Pass­port” was met with such awaken­ing for those who hadn’t heard the poem before.  Wide-eyed people smiled as Rafeef played on the words heir and hairs whilst swear­ing an oath to the queen. Her break­down of her exper­i­ence at a Cana­dian immig­ra­tion office por­trayed so many points on how we are one the same and how flawed their ana­lys­is and ver­dict on what makes someone a cit­izen is. She con­tin­ued with more enlight­en­ing poetry which could only inspire and strengthen the spir­it of every­one who watched. I would abso­lutely con­sider look­ing up her stuff and catch­ing her next performance.

The evoc­a­tion of excite­ment the crowd mani­fes­ted was at real heights by the time Narcy hit the stage. What bet­ter song to intro­duce him­self to the audi­ence than the track RED that fea­tures Yasi­in Bey. The Iraqi- Cana­dian who resides in Mon­tréal blew the house down with heavy instru­ment­als and the type of flow that got every­one sweat­ing buck­ets rid­ing pul­ver­ising sound waves.  His music spoke with such pat­ri­ot­ism and show­cased an enorm­ous respect for women and his grat­it­ude for fam­ily. Narcy will be back but I may catch him on my next trip to Canada.

 Finally the pièce de résist­ance, the artists who has been cham­pi­on­ing social justice tour­ing the UK as part as his illus­tri­ous return, Lowkey hit the stage.  He came on with the same sin­cer­ity and humble­ness that came from every single act. He jumped into the crowd smil­ing doing his best to shake and meet every­one in the front row. Solid­i­fy­ing his sym­bol as the people’s cham­pi­on, he brought people up on stage and gave them a chance to recite the lyr­ics from his all time hits. Not to men­tion a lot of the open­ing per­formers where involved through­out Lowkey’s music with MIC Right­eous fea­tur­ing on ‘Revolu­tion’. Awate was right behind Lowkey on the decks and more asso­ci­ated acts were present. Mai Khalil and Asheber sung their heart out on the Ghost of Gren­fell song and yes we will get to that. A refresh­ing scene of fist raised, flags waved and big smiles. My per­son­al favour­ite was ‘My Soul’ from the ‘Soundtrack to the Struggle’. You can’t beat the chor­us sung live. Nos­tal­gia and lib­er­a­tion shook the room with Lowkey deliv­er­ing all expect­a­tions over Boom Bap head bangers and intim­ate acoustics.

 Con­clus­ively, the entire night col­lect­ively led to one of the most mov­ing per­form­ances I have ever wit­nessed. The entire ven­ue com­mem­or­ated the tra­gic incid­ent at Gren­fell towers with its icon­ic heart sur­round­ing the name. If I am review­ing a per­form­ance, I spend the major­ity of the gig in the crowd front row with every­body so I can get a genu­ine per­spect­ive. For some reas­on, this is the occa­sion; I decided to hang out in the back­ground on stage. I wanted to be amongst the per­formers rep­res­ent­ing the magazine with keep grat­it­ude for this song. Little did we know; that with all the cal­ibre per­formers, it was the audi­ence that stole the show. The voice for the voice­less became one and people col­lect­ively poured out every drop of their des­pair they had that night.  Last thing I saw was teary and amongst many, we wiped our eyes and took a breath to gath­er what we just wit­nessed. I made my way back­stage in hopes of meet­ing Lowkey and all the oth­er tal­ents and I arrived in a room where every­one was embra­cing each oth­er. The per­formers where phys­ic­ally and emo­tion­ally drained but still man­aged to talk to and shake the hands of every­one who came through. All and all it was a once in a life­time per­form­ance. If it hap­pens again, you best be there.

Foot­age & Pho­to­graphy by Sulei­man Yusuf.