The UK’s most important and unlikely looking hip hop stars turned up at a packed Astoria 2 to deliver their ‘motivational seminar’.  The three lecturers, yes three (the other bloke was armed with an AppleMac identical to Dan’s but didn’t make the billing!) were resplendent in shirt and tie making hip-hop’s unlikeliest even more unlikely.

Opening with crowd pleaser ‘Beats that my heart skipped’, they then segued into ‘Look for the woman’ forming the first of Scroob’s lectures on ‘love’.  Other lectures followed on ‘lessons’, ‘development’ and finally ‘religion’ (it had to be in there somewhere).

The duo (trio?) are everything hip hop should be, lyrics with substance, intelligence and humour, which as Scroobius pointed out, was what hip hop used to be about.  He berated 90 percent of today’s UK hip hop as ‘crap’ before launching into a pastiche of Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’ with his own alternative ‘Fixed’ with the change ‘Hip hop is art, (so make a fucking pop record be smart)’.

You realise then that the other lectures are just a smokescreen, this is their real message: Hip hop is art.  How did a genre that gave us Public Enemy and ‘fight the power’ degenerate into wannabe gangsters with their jeans round their knees banging on about guns and bitches? Scroobius Pip preaches over Dan’s staccato rhythms like hip-hop’s bearded messiah, in fact if you come to think of it… it’s been a while since we’ve had one of them.  It was the magnificent ‘Though shalt always kill’ which quite rightly provided the high point; the crowd as one dismissing everyone from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Bloc Party as ‘just a band’.  (Must take issue with you there Scroob… Bloc Party are ace!)

The encore was filled by bizarre covers of Prince’s Cream and Sugababes ‘Push the button’ before support act Playdo returned to centre stage to inform that ‘Dan and Scroobius…are just a band.’

So as someone once said: ‘He’s not the messiah’.  One thing is for sure though…they won’t be singing about wearing a fucking Rolex’s anytime soon. 

Posted In Live Reviews, Aug 23 2008. Words - Thomas