I’m going to set myself a bit of a challenge with this one, I’m going to see if I can get to the end of this article without ever going off on a tangent about the vitality and growth of UK hip-hop. See that? I almost went off on one just by describing the thing I’m going to avoid, this might be difficult.
Anyway, we covered Boom Bap Festival 2014 in as much detail as I was able to offer bearing in mind all the whacked out things I did to my brain during my time there last year. This year the event is set to be even bigger and badder, with headline slots allocated to Jeru the Damaja, Earl Sweatshirt and some interesting non-hip-hop fare like Fatima & the Eglo Band and fLako. I won’t give any more details away, since we’ll be running a full preview on BB2015 in the very near future so for now let’s focus on the more immediate goings on.
For the next few weeks, Boom Bap are teaming up with High Focus to run a series of warm-up gigs across the country as many festivals do. The Four Owls are on the front line of it, which is nicely appropriate seeing as they are the golden boys of both High Focus and UK hip-hop at large at the moment (easy Callum, easy there). Last Friday the Cambridge leg of the series went down and I went along to see what was what.
Appropriately for a Boom Bap event, it wasn’t as simple as a whistle-stop run of 2 or 3 supporting acts and maybe an hour devoted to the main event. Instead a juicy roster of 10 rapid fire stage events was listed, wrong-footing anyone who might have planned on rolling up at 10pm already shitfaced and just grooving for a few hours before moving on elsewhere. Besides the expected run of MCs and intermittent DJ sets, the stage played host to an open mic cypher and audience polled contest. Some break dancing was involved in the form of local heroes the Generation Ill B-Boys and other home-grown talent like Tea Unit also made an appearance.
The highlights of the supporting roster though were the two MCs that rounded out the bill before The Four Owls. Ocean Wisdom, a relatively recent High Focus signing spat up an absolute thunderstorm which whirled the crowd into a far more energetic state than anything that came before and after a brief but brilliant instrumental set by DJ Sammy B-Side (hearing him drop a Mouse Outfit beat almost made me squeal with joy) Inja took up mic duties and raised the bar even higher, performing a live rendition of ‘The Cooking Song’ which featured in Wordplay Magazine (it’s an actual, workable recipe).
It was a well organised, rapid-fire setlist that allowed just the right amount of breathing room (with the upstairs allocated to a string of DnB acts, just in case you felt like you needed a palette cleanser). The Four Owls came on at around 22:15 and threw out a massive set that to my delight consisted largely of material from their new album, Natural Order, which if you recall earlier in the year I had more than a few nice things to say about. What was interesting though was that rather than just sticking to all the hype tracks, the group also played ‘Control’ and ‘Old Earth’, which are both very somber, very emotional tracks and you could feel the mood shift ripple through the crowd. BVA in particular looked like he was carrying one hell of a weight when he started on ‘Old Earth’, being that his verse pays tribute to his deceased grandfather.
I was a little taken aback by the decision at first but ultimately it demonstrated the same kind of bravery and maturity I’ve come to expect from the foursome since Natural Order dropped, it showed that they’re about more than just the party now, shit’s getting serious. I’m not sure the crowd exactly caught that particularly wave in any concrete way but it doesn’t really matter, if they do the same thing at Boom Bap, it will leave everyone stunned. Appropriately (and gloriously) they closed out with ‘Think Twice’, their collaborative track with DJ Premier and it ripped the walls down, every bit as potent live as it is recorded. Boom Bap have nothing to prove at this stage, their reputation for putting on breathless, razor sharp live events is well recognised, but it’s about so much more than hype building for them, they’re the great celebrators of UK hip-hop, the ambassadors and this year’s festival should be absolutely immense. Does that count as a tangent? Oh who cares, it’s worth ranting about.
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