Islington Academy
17.06.09
As if playing your first ever show in the UK wasn’t daunting enough, imagine being a hip hop artist supporting the Bouncing Souls, facing a room full of punks.
It didn’t bother Doomtree member and Rhymesayer signee P.O.S one bit though on Wednesday as he kindly asked anyone who wasn’t interested in opening their mind to rap to leave the room. “If you want to stick around, then awesome, let’s have some fun,” he proclaimed, and fun was exactly was what was had.
Backed up ably by the twinkle-fingered Plain Ole Bill, the Minneapolis rapper burst through tracks from his latest album, and my album of the year by light years, Never Better, hitting the crowd with a non-stop barrage of words. If he was worried that the crowd wouldn’t be into it, halfway through the second song he would have been calmed, as the room had filled out and a good half were batting their hands in the air to the beats.
Even the straight up hip hop tracks Savion Glover, which saw P.O.S hit the MPC and Plain Ole Bill delivered the cuts, and Stand Up, taken from his second album Audition, went down well. By the time he had finished, no-one was in any doubt that they’d just witnessed arguably the brightest light in independent hip hop and the rap world as a whole.
On this form, there is nothing that can stop P.O.S from battering down the door of every closed-minded music fan. The smile on his face spoke a thousand words. The smile on mine hasn’t left since.
Abjekt.