Sunday, July 24, 2016

MC Devvo, MC Starstruk, Crime and Punishment 2011. Live at the Rainbow review (23/7/16)

James Thomas here! The Internet's laziest music nerd, and now it's time for a review of a show I saw at The Rainbow. Birmingham's premier Grimetallers (Grime + Metal = Grimetal), Crime and Punishment 2011, Only finished their début UK tour (alongside Luke Rainsford, Lauren Marie and various local support bands) and they were already up to play a support show on home turf.  Being a veteran of many CPK shows, I knew what to expect. But their mix of Trap influenced beats, sampled guitars, screaming and bars made the majority of the crowd form a nervous circle, and facial expressions varying from utter confusion to huge smiles. They all made a nice effort to play the few more upbeat tunes from their small back catalogue, including storming covers of The Weekend's The Hills and Skepta's Shutdown. I ended up dancing alongside some geezer who kept asking me who they were, and I got the crowd to shout for an encore. Despite having a huge barrier to climb over in order to scream at peoples faces and playing to MC Devvo's crowd, CPK won everyone over, despite the depressing 'storms' being the finale.

MC Starstruk started his set with his own Skepta cover (That's not me) before boldly claiming to be better than Skepta. I didn't get any good photos (guess which numpty forgot his camera). So you'll just have to imagine a twat from Coventry, in cargo shorts, a t shirt reading the slogan 'prozzies for oldies' and balaclava rapping about his nan's mobility scooter, Coventry and 'smelly vaginas' on the song 'Sort ya minge out'. This was all paced out between spoken word skits where he explained that the balaclava was because he'd been claiming disability benefits and if they saw him jumping around on stage he'd have no money to buy drugs. He described himself as being a sexy Fred Durst, and during one tune had the crowd shout the chorus "wank off your dad and finger your mum!". He then went one further and had a wank on stage. Mc Starstruk's set was pure immature filth set to a barrage of some of sickest grime beats I've ever heard, and I'm still laughing about it now. 
MC Devvo  kept us waiting while he got lost in the backstreets of Digbeth. When he got on stage his mix of stand up comedy and rap tunes felt strangely sophisticated next to MC Starstruk's depravity. He told us all the strange story of how he went from kicking a pigeon to to performing on stage and why he's decided to quit. He had skits about shouting at trains, and He showed off his 2nd gen iPod (with all his backing tracks on) and when I asked what was on it waved it in my face and stole my phone. I stuck around to hear him go on about how shit Doncaster is and perform his hit songs 'Crystal Meffin' and 'lads on tour' and go on about how other MC's all hate him. It was funny, but not enough to stop me going home halfway through. 

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