Review: @TheOutlawz Pay Homage to Tupac @TheJazzCafe

The Out­lawz (now com­prised of E.D.I Mean, Young Noble and Hus­sain Fatal) have recently embarked on a European tour appear­ing in Rus­sia, Bul­garia, Ire­land and London’s legendary Jazz Café. Ini­tially when I was asked to cov­er the show I was appre­hens­ive as admit­tedly I have only really heard smat­ter­ings of the Out­lawz, either as fea­tures on Tupac tracks or slightly more prom­in­ently on the Tupac posthum­ous album Still I Rise. I was under­stand­ably wor­ried that the Out­lawz (post Pac) had per­haps amassed an under­ground fol­low­ing that were fans of their solo out­ings where­as I had nev­er heard an Out­lawz track without Tupac.

Dur­ing the pre­amble DJ Mo Fin­gaz had the dif­fi­cult task of nav­ig­at­ing a rather diverse crowd and at times boos of dis­ap­prov­al could be heard dur­ing his set, how­ever I felt his set man­aged to encom­pass enough old skool with some clas­sic joints from Dre’s Chron­ic: 2001 to Capone N Nore­aga all the way through to the new skool with the likes of Joey Bada$$ and Kendrick Lemar. After the multi gen­er­a­tion span­ning DJ set on came West Coast rap­per Louis King who burst on to the stage with incred­ible energy and really lif­ted what had became a rather dormant crowd. Although many of the crowd may not have heard Louis King before, he made sure his per­form­ance was note­worthy as he enthu­si­ast­ic­ally rapped and even sang dir­ectly to one fan, his short but great per­form­ance was topped off with him throw­ing cop­ies of his mix­tape into the audience.

The Out­lawz then stormed the stage to the hard hit­ting bass­line of Tupac’s swan song Hail Mary and the crowd erup­ted as every­one began singing the fam­ous hook.  They then kept up the tempo by fol­low­ing up with oth­er clas­sic Pac tracks like This Life I lead, Last Muthafuka Breath­in and a cut from the Gang Related OST Lost Souls. All of these tracks had the crowd going wild as we all were clutch­ing on to little snip­pets of Tupac’s leg­acy. E.D.I Mean then treated us to one of his solo tracks which hon­estly went pretty much unnoticed as the major­ity of the audi­ence just wanted to hear more Tupac. Of course the Out­lawz obliged and we were giv­en some dance floor friendly tracks with Its All About You and Thugs Pas­sion. How­ever the moment we had all been wait­ing for was soon upon us as Hit em Up began play­ing and abso­lute pan­de­moni­um ensued and the once dormant crowd was trans­formed in an instant as the crowd began jump­ing all over the place while sim­ul­tan­eously rap­ping the entire track word for word with intens­ity that would of made Pac him­self proud.  The show was closed with a pos­it­ive mes­sage as the Out­lawz paid their respects to Nate Dogg, Notori­ous BIG and the man him­self Tupac.

I think it shows just how extraordin­ary (if you had any doubt) Tupac’s leg­acy really is.  Although the Out­lawz are indeed liv­ing off this leg­acy I don’t think it’s neces­sar­ily a bad thing, as by doing so they are also help­ing to keep his leg­acy alive.

By Seth Pereira

The fol­low­ing two tabs change con­tent below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Rishma Dhaliwal

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds

Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voice­less. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

Latest posts by Rishma Dhaliwal (see all)

• ELIZA, EARL SWEAT­SHIRT AND NILS FRAHM TO PER­FORM THE INAUG­UR­AL JAZZ CAFE FEST­IV­AL — Septem­ber 3, 2024
• THEATRE IN LON­DON | JOY­WAY LON­DON PRESENTS ‘WING CHUN’ AT THE SADLER’S WELLS A FUSION OF CON­TEM­POR­ARY DANCE, DRAMA AND MAR­TIAL ARTS TELLS THE TRUE STORY OF GRAND­MAS­TER YIP MAN, TRAIN­ER OF BRUCE LEE — August 29, 2024
• INTER­VIEW | RAP­PER LAFAY­ETTE STOKELY DIS­CUSSES NEW SINGLE ‘ABUND­ANCE’ — August 28, 2024