REVIEW | MACKLEMORE (@macklemore ‏) LIVE AT @O2academybrix

By Aisha • On Reviews ,

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MACKLEMORE 06/04/18 – Brix­ton Academy

 That part of a live music gig in the minutes just before the artist comes on stage, are usu­ally the most tense. All my pre­con­cep­tions dis­sip­ate and I really don’t know what to expect. If it’s an artist I know and love, there’s always that chance that they won’t hit the flow that aligns with the energy. In oth­er words, some­thing will just feel off. If it’s an artist I’m not so famil­i­ar with or enthu­si­ast­ic about, there’s a big chance they’ll assign them­selves in my men­tal filling cab­in­et under the label “time wasted”.

 Macklemore sits in a strange cros­sov­er of famili­ar­ity for me. There are a few songs that I know and thor­oughly appre­ci­ate; “Can’t Hold Us” became an anthem for me. “Neon Cathed­ral” swells up an addict’s mel­an­choly with­in me which few songs seem to match. “White Priv­ilege II” was a rarely spoken nar­rat­ive that I still appre­ci­ate for its nudging abil­ity to remind me that protest without self-aware­ness can be wound­ingly inef­fect­ive. I see his inten­tion and I feel his authen­ti­city so he’s on my radar, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m a fan. Either way, I needed to see his live show because I just knew it would be an enter­tain­ing show.

 I tend to watch the house lights. You know something’s about to shift some ser­i­ous energy when those house lights dim down and the crowd starts cheer­ing both in and at total dark­ness. In those moments, no mat­ter how loud the crowd becomes, everything inside me becomes silent. I can hear echoes in my head. I can feel the blood cours­ing through my veins. In the moments before an artist takes the stage, I feel a com­bin­a­tion of warmth and secur­ity. I don’t know if any­one else will get that, or if every­one gets it. But I do know that when the music starts… I feel love.

 There’s one feel­ing I love more than almost any oth­er feel­ing. There is noth­ing that com­pares to the sound and vibe of the Bass that thumps you in the chest. When a song starts and the sub­woof­er hap­pens to be in just the right spot, the Bass drops and the vibra­tions rattle through my rib-cage and ripple through both the soles of my feet and the soul of my exist­ence. For me, this is one of the reas­ons I love live music. One of the reas­ons I love hip hop. One of the reas­ons I love and have pas­sion for good sound engin­eer­ing. The Bass and rhythm are the found­a­tions for a good song; vocal­ists can be massively over-rated but the Bass just sits patiently and lov­ingly provid­ing the struc­ture for the love and spir­it of great music. This show reminded me of all this. It all came rush­ing back in that very first bass thump. It may have been my favour­ite part of the night.

 “Ain’t Gonna Die Tonight” was the open­ing song. It man­aged to cap­ture a sense of what this show was going to be; a mix of intens­ity and play. As soon as Macklemore appeared, the crowd went wild and almost deaf­en­ingly so. I can’t remem­ber the last time I saw so many white people that happy… like ser­i­ously, I really can’t. The song came with sup­port vocals from Eric Nally; a mod­ern day Fred­die Mer­cury who works the crowd into the sing-a-long moments. Along with “Firebreath­er”, com­plete with pyros which are always nice to see, and held the same flow and set the same tone for the rest of the evening.

 After an ode to his daugh­ter, next came “Marmalade”. I heard someone describe this song as “plinky-plonky” and I think it’s the per­fect descrip­tion for a song that isn’t really my kinda thing. Macklemore’s break out song in 2012 man­aged to become an award win­ning sleep­er hit; hit­ting num­ber 1’s in mul­tiple coun­tries and accru­ing over 1.1 bil­lion views on You­Tube. “Thrift Shop” may well be the reas­on Macklemore stands before us and it’s smart to keep a song like that at the top of the set list. It’s an enter­tain­ing and catchy song com­plete with back-up dan­cers, but there isn’t really much more to the live per­form­ance of it oth­er than the hype it’s still rid­ing on. The essence of the song is a clev­er anti­thes­is to the chains and whips flashy-rap that exists; it’s just a shame the song couldn’t erad­ic­ate that trend entirely.

 After an emo­tion­al “Same Love” per­form­ance intro­duced by Macklemore’s pro­clam­a­tion to equal­ity, the crowd was now warmed up for the bulk of the “Gem­ini” solo album. Com­plete with cos­tume changes, audi­ence mem­ber-dance offs and guest vocal­ist Jess Glynn, this chunk was the play part and was some­what hit and miss for me, but thank­fully the misses weren’t enough to throw off the entire show. I liked see­ing that Macklemore was clearly happy on stage doing his thing; some­times it’s just nice to see someone’s infec­tious smile and res­on­ant joy. How­ever, with all due respect to his jour­ney and his self-reflect­ive style; I can’t help think­ing that his earli­er, more polit­ic­al work might’ve been the type of show that spoke to me and provided some­thing more memorable.

 Macklemore asked people to put their phones away for a minute and enjoy the next song like we were liv­ing in the 90’s. Being a bit of a tech­no­phobe myself, I appre­ci­ated the sen­ti­ment. Some people didn’t respect it but the vast major­ity stopped watch­ing the world through a screen for a minute and enjoyed “Can’t Hold Us” in all its anthem­ic glory. He closed with the lead single from his solo pro­ject entitled “Glor­i­ous”.

This song actu­ally is some­what glor­i­ous and I’m not entirely sure why; it just feels like the type of song I wanna hear on a beau­ti­ful day when the sun’s shin­ing, and I’m run­ning to remind myself that I can. The sweetest part of the night might have been see­ing the smile and the grat­it­ude on Macklemore’s face; because even if this impress­ive show had ended up being a shitty show, see­ing a person’s vis­ible joy and grat­it­ude is a highly redeem­ing quality.

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Aisha

Aisha is a Writer and Research­er based in Lon­don. She Thanks you for reading.

About Aisha

Aisha is a Writer and Researcher based in London. She Thanks you for reading.