I didnt realise Slick Rick was actual born very near to where I’m living at the moment here in London. Crazy, an he was actually blind in that one eye, I thought maybe it was just his fashion thing. Where would we be without Wikipedia!? haha.

When’s the last time you heard some positive rap lyrics that can compare to this…

“Hey young world… the world is yours..

This rap here… it may cause concern its
Broad and deep… why dont you listen and learn..

Get ahead… and accomplish things
Youll see the wonder and the joy life brings

Go for yours, cause dreams come true

Societys a weak excuse for a man
Its time for the brothers… rap is trying to take the stand”

- Slick Rick, Hey Young World.

So last night we went to the first of two London “Glow in the Dark Tour” gigs by Kanye West at the awesome o2 stadium.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, I’ve generally liked most of Kanye’s stuff and I appreciate his “fuck you I’ll do what I wanna do with my life” attitude that comes through in both his personality and his lyrics. I also share his healthy childhood obsession with all things Back to the Future. We missed the warm up act which was either Santogold or M.I.A I’m not sure, but were in time for the start of Kanyes set.

From the start It was different to any concert I’ve been to and definitely different to your standard rap/hip-hop concert. Straight away you could tell there had been a shit-load of thought and work gone into what was a very conceptual show, that felt more like a musical theater event than a hip hop show, but in a good way.

The sound at the o2 was fantastic, and you could really appreciate the attention to refined audio production that Kanye is usually obsessed with, right the way down to individual drum samples.

Apparently Kanye had “RE-ORCHESTRATED EVERY TRACK 2 FOLLOW A NARRATIVE.” and he followed that revelation with a possible explanation for all the caps: “WE’VE LEARNED TO SURVIVE OFF OF 1 HOUR OF SLEEP A DAY!” This was evident in slightly different sound for certain tracks, that really helped them fit in together as one in a seamless/fluid feeling show.

There were at least 2 others below the stage bashing two huge tribal drums throughout the show, that and the addition of live guitar helped give each song a slightly different live/edgier feel.

The only fuk-up was on his vocoder essential new track “love lockdown”, where he got 1/4 way through the song and realised the vocoder wasn’t working, so stopped, walked of stage, and started again from scratch a couple of minutes later, vocoder happy.

All in all, definitely recommended!

“Wait till i get my money right, ….then you cant tell me nothing, right!?”