The Camp; XOYO, London
You don't often see violins at hip-hop gigs. Or xylophones. For his UK headline debut in this dank east London basement, US rapper Childish Gambino comes accompanied by a live band, in which it is one man's role to alternate between violin, xylophone and ? yes, really ? a tambourine.
Some hip-hop enthusiasts would suck their teeth at all this, and at the absence of a DJ. There will always be those who will point to the fact that Gambino's real name is Donald Glover, and his day job is comedy writing (The Daily Show, 30 Rock) and acting on TV (NBC's Community). Instead of oversized sportswear and even bigger jewellery, he wears a white hipster's V-neck T-shirt for much of his set, giving him the faint look of a young Cassius Clay. In fact, the most bling thing about Gambino is his fluorescent orange ear-plugs.
Much of his considerable appeal lies in the way he repeatedly questions the fundamentals of hip-hop culture. Outside the venue are posters advertising Gambino's recent album, Camp ? a pretty tendentious title in a genre not know for embracing its feminine side, much less its love of the great outdoors.
In the flesh, though, he is a powerhouse. Lithe and animated, Gambino flies through more than an hour of word-perfect flows, climbing on the lighting desk, freestyling capably, going walkabout in the audience, and rapping so fiercely into one girl's camera you fear for the spittle in its circuits. His critiques of hip-hop's codes are all the more powerful because they come not from a worthy "conscious" rapper but from one who throws out funny, rude rhymes like shrapnel made from gynaecological instruments.
"Yeah my stinger's in the flower/ I hope she let me pollinate/ Working hard as shit/ Yeah this beat is made from concentrate," is one neat couplet from "Freaks and Geeks", the point, four songs in, at which the audience stops being merely excited and actively starts convulsing.
Many of Camp's highlights are here, as well as the fruits of his pre-breakthrough mixtape albums. "Backpackers" is a slick take-down of his critics and their disdain for Glover's non-ghetto background. He grew up in the suburbs in Georgia, the child of Jehovah's Witnesses who fostered troubled children. Glover worked hard, went to a predominantly white school, then college, then swiftly into comedy writing. In the process, he was never "black enough" for the purist hip-hop crowd, but still plenty "black enough" for cops and racists. This simmering volcano of indignation erupts just as often into humour as into vitriol.
Gambino's stylistic debt to that other middle-class rapper, Kanye West, seems a little smaller tonight than on record, even when he uses West's "All of the Lights" as a springboard for one of his own hell-for-leather verses. Even better is Gambino's embellishment of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" (via Jamie XX), a frenetic blur of bitter words about a girl in which the whole venue feels like a ship pitching in a storm. If there are moments of relative regret ? "All the Shine" is a wobbly rock fusion in which Glover's singing never quite convinces ? then a raw and manic "Bonfire" relights the touchpaper.
Across the road, in another dank east London basement the following night, the season of new band showcases is in full non-swing. Playing to a roomful of stony-faced industry types standing at the back, and a handful of genuine gig-goers bobbing at the front, is probably no fun at all ? especially when the fans are there for the headliners, Howler (aka "the new Vaccines").
But London's Zulu Winter make the most of it. Their own bizarre "new Vaccines" tag makes no sense unless you know ZW share their management with 2011's indie success story, rather than their sound.
Zulu Winter actually take as their starting point the dance-rock of Foals and Friendly Fires, adding Arctic Monkeys phrasing and considerable bone structure from singer Will Daunt. If they look like a perfect storm in Dalston, they sound all sinuous and saturated on songs such as "We Should Be Swimming", only their second single.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/29/childish-gambino-zulu-winter-review
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