Music > Live Reviews

Sugarhill Gang With Grandmaster Melle Mel & Scorpio's Furious 5

The Adrian Flux Waterfront

14/06/19

If I’m being honest I’m not sure I’d have gone to see Sugarhill Gang, Melle Mel and Scorpio for a third time if it hadn’t fallen at this time of year. With festival season underway and a paucity of gigs over the coming months, I figured I should grasp the opportunity to see these legends another time, knowing that a good time was pretty much a guarantee. The crowd was thin on the ground when I arrived, and I felt for local legend Chrome as he began his set playing a selection of hip hop classics from the last 40 years. It should come as no surprise though that over the course of 90 minutes Chrome played a blinder. Moving through the years and decades, it was great to hear a faultless selection of brilliant music from the birth of the genre, via Snoop, Wu-Tang, Jurassic 5, Roots Manuva and Dizzee Rascal, before arriving in the present day with Kendrick, Childish Gambino and Loyle Carner. By the time Chrome wrapped up his set the crowd had swelled to a couple of hundred, there was a legit atmosphere in the room, and we were set.

The show that these guys put on is from a different era. They are entertainers. The show is slick, they are pros and they work incredibly hard to get the maximum out of the crowd. We’re not always the easiest audience to engage with, but for the duration of the hour or so they were on stage, it felt like everyone was putting their all into it: dancing, hands in the air and screaming as instructed. The gig followed much the same pattern as the previous two times I’ve seen them – Sugarhill came on first, Wonder Mike & Master Gee rapping in perfect unison, before Melle Mel and Scorpio came on and did their slot. All of them are masters of their craft, and getting a crowd moving is something they can do in their sleep. Then, along with Hen Dogg, they all teamed up on stage to take the party to the next level. Smashing through every song you could possibly wish to hear – Apache, 8thWonder, Rapper’s Delight, White Lines and The Message, it was a lesson in musical history. By the time their set ended, everyone around me was completely into the business of having fun. Fans were immediately invited up on stage to buy t-shirts and get their selfies with the guys, no shame to their game, and there were no shortage of takers.

Sometimes seeing an act multiple times can lessen the impact, and I was certainly wary of that, but I would say this was the most enjoyable experience I’ve had watching them yet. Yes, there’s something ever so slightly cheesy about their act, but in all honesty, I’ve been to so many hip hop shows that have left me feeling disappointed or short changed, these guys deliver an hour of first class entertainment and I suspect it won’t be too long before they rock up in Norwich again.