Hip-Hop Connection Arena

Roots Day, Essential Festival, Bristol, UK, 6 May 2002

Hmmm the morning after. I gotta say that Essential was phat even if Pharoahe Monche didn't show, Biz Markie didn't show, Doug E. Fresh didn't show, Lee 'Scratch' Perry didn't show and De La Soul never turned up, but hey, you can't have everything.

However, it must be said that Essential was still rockin'. The two warm up DJs, with a combination of mixing and turntablism really got the crowd up for a bit before the first act and fill-in group New Flesh. These guys sounded a bit like gospel ragga and set off into a 30-minute set which was fairly heavy at points. The lead emcee/singer, dressed in a white suit, spat a verse and then rewound and spat the same verse at double speed. Anyway, after trying to get round a disgruntled audience, they departed, leaving 20-minutes for the DJs to return to the stage.

The Bristol hip-hop crew Aspects, with beatboxer Monkey Moo ripped apart with the home support. Surprisingly, they had a 50/50 split with tracks backed by vinyl and tracks they did with Monkey Moo beatboxing - heavy! Anyway, as the set progressed, Monkey Moo started doing little beatbox patterns and then Aspects gave him the stage, and to be quite honest, he ripped it apart.

After the Aspects set, the Landahn (London) duo Fallacy and Fusion hit the stage with their highly anticipated head banger, 'The Groundbreaker', and absoloutely killed it. The audience were just goin ape-shit!

High and Mighty kicked off about and hour later, with Cage and Copywrite rippin mics to pieces and keepin the whole audience captivated for what seemed to be only 15-20 mins, but was actually an hour. As the set wound on and wound up, Tim Westwood took to walking up and down the stage. He was introduced by High and Mighty only to be boo'd, which was f**kin amusing and then some guy from the audience threw a beer can from a distance and missed his face by inches. If Westwood represented British talent a bit more then he might get some respect; you'd figure that he would have learned that by now. The Hiphop Connection tent basically cleared in minutes with Westwood's set consisting of a spin back and flippin the fader each time he 'mixed a track'. Perhaps he feels insecure about not having his explosion button to hand?

After another period of Westwood mixing, who thought he was doing well to hold the crowd but we were just waiting for Rahzel, the Godfather of Noyze stepped up to the stage to the roar of the crowd. All he had to do was walk on stage and he had the crowd converted. His DJ, JS1 was an utter scratch pervert and he absoloutley slaughtered his decks with a mix of rock and hip-hop. They called it 'innovation' but fair play, it was heavy.

The man himself launched into a Matrix set. The thing that amazed me was when he was doing a beat and continually rewound a track at the same time. He then had a vocal scratch vs real scratch battle with JS1 which was funny. He flipped into an aray of tracks including some new raps of his forthcoming album 'Super Human' and some new beatboxing routines which had me in awe. The crowd were just waiting for 'If Your Mother Only Knew', and when he performed it with the bassline, everyones face just lit up and some idiot in the mosh pit nearly broke my foot!

His set ended with 'All I Know', and I left to take the long walk back to Bristol, too knackered to stay to see the final act, Ugly Duckling.

Review by Emcee Live
Photos by A-Plus