To Club Soda last night to see Dizzee Rascal, the 20 year-old hip-hop hero from London. None of the sad chaviness of The Streets here; it’s more Tupac/Fiddy focused on the desolation of the East End.
At least, that’s what the reviews say. I have to confess to feeling a bit out of it. The sound mix was bad, and I can’t pretend to having understood much more than the odd “Yo Yo Montreal!” and the occasional chorus (“I wish you were six years younger”). The anti-cool Montreal crowd certainly seemed into it though, hands in the air just like down at 8 mile.
The hilight for me was observing the absolute necessity of having a sidekick. Dizzee had some dude playing Boswell to his Johnson, a man whose job it was to rhyme along with the odd sentence, while making sure that the crowd’s hands were pushing up or down, as the occasion demanded. Dizzee also had the balls to yell “Thank You Vancouver!” at one point, and I can’t decide whether it’s cooler if he did it on purpose, or cooler if he didn’t.