REVIEW | scHoolboy Q AND JAY ROCK SHUT DOWN LONDON

The show star­ted in a truly unique way. Before even enter­ing the ven­ue, arriv­ing at the des­tin­a­tion to find park­ing, and just so hap­pen­ing to be pulled up at a traffic light when to my immense amazement, I lock eyes with the man him­self. ScHool­boy Q! Cas­u­ally walk­ing a few yards behind what looked like a secur­ity guard through at street in Brixton.

The instant acknow­ledge­ment was mutu­al as I instinct­ively threw up a ‘three’ with my fin­gers and he, without any hes­it­a­tion, walked over to my car with a humble but excited dia­mond grilled smile. I could­n’t roll the win­dow down fast enough!

Grabbing each oth­ers hand to show respect we exchanged a few words which ended with me stat­ing that I was com­ing to watch the show. The night was set!

Jay Rock, anoth­er mem­ber of the super group Black Hippi, gave the crowd the pleas­ure of feel­ing like they were get­ting two dif­fer­ent con­certs in one, per­form­ing cult hits such as ‘Rota­tion’, ‘Tap Out’, and the grammy nom­in­ated super smash ‘WIN’.

With a more than ready crowd, the whole stage went dark. Com­ing out to the intro track ‘Gang Gang’ off of his latest album ‘CrasH Talk’, the stage lights went on to reveal two people sit­ting on oppos­ite sides of the stage behind him dressed in all black, wear­ing paper bags with cut out eye holes over their faces. The theme for the cov­er art of his album. It set the mood of the already eer­ie goth­ic sound­ing intro song.

The high energy per­form­ance con­tin­ued on from song to song, only stop­ping for Q to con­vey what seemed like the under­ly­ing tone of the whole show, grat­it­ude. Speeches were made, but the major one that stood out and war­ran­ted the erup­tion of all the fans in attend­ance, is when he took a few minutes to express his feel­ings toward a moth­er and son who had come to see his show togeth­er. The fact that they were request­ing songs from his cata­logue that were made back as far as 2014 seem­ingly had the rap star humbled to his core. He prom­ised anoth­er album this year and stated that he’d been hard at work on it already, and that moments like hav­ing a moth­er and son at his show togeth­er motiv­ates him even fur­ther to provide his fans with what they want. More music from Q!

At anoth­er point in the show he brought a fan up on stage when it was revealed he had a tat­too of ScHool­boy on his leg. Q took the moment to let the star struck fan per­son­ally pick the next song that would be per­formed. After doing so Q gave the fan a hug and reques­ted that he went back off stage via a crowd surf when the song dropped! A surely magic­al moment for the con­cert attendee.

I atten­ded a ScHool­boy Q con­cert in 2014. The per­form­ances where good back then. But in con­trast, Q seems to have estab­lished an authen­t­ic con­nec­tion with his fans and a new found grat­it­ude for his gift of music and per­form­ance. If there’s one thing that stood out about Q that night, I would say that he has found his “happy place” on that stage. Energy does­n’t lie. And I can safely say that every per­son in that packed out O2 Brix­ton Academy ven­ue felt that Hiii power energy.

Long live Q!

Pho­to­graphy By Nadia Otshudi