The thrifty hip-hop duo from Seattle kicked off their European tour with a bouncy, life affirming gig with the help of a British Polar Bear.
Everyone’s heard ‘Thrift Shop’, the number 1 anti-commercialism hip-hop song of the last decade, so there was a worry that this gig might run out of steam after the last horn blast of the duo’s most famous track. Not a chance. Opening with ‘10,000 Hours’, which glorifies hard work and dedication, Macklemore was running around the foliage covered stage, not letting the screaming sell out crowd over-awe him just yet.
When Macklemore asked for lights up to see the “London style” everyone knew which song was coming next. But when he spotted a white fur coat at the back, the owner was happy to let it be crowd-surfed to the front. Ryan Lewis called it a “British Polar Bear”. Despite it apparently smelling of “a grandmother who drank a shitload of whiskey and shat herself”, Macklemore wore it to rap about buying broken keyboards and your grandpa’s hand-me-downs. Duly crowd-surfed back to its owner, Macklemore explained where he came from as an artist, how getting high then “just jacking off and sleeping” made him enter rehab. Launching into a spoken word rendition of ‘Otherside’, you could tell Macklemore should be more than a one-hit wonder. ‘Wing$’ with its anti-commercialism message and ‘Same Love’ (demanding social equality regardless of sexuality) had the crowd singing along, before everyone went fully batshit crazy for ‘Can’t Hold Us’. Despite the whole crowd bouncing around, some muppets still tried to record the song. Put your phones away and dance you fools.
Re-appearing as Sir Raven Bowie for the odd euro-dance of ‘And We Danced’ still confused me, its just not a good song in any shape or form. But with an encore of ‘Irish Celebration’ and another bounce around for ‘Can’t Hold Us’, the crowd headed out to the Brixton night sweaty but smiling.
8.5/10, only due to ‘And We Danced’ being played and because I missed Chance the Rapper’s support slot.
