Live Review

MC Lars – The Grove, Wimbledon

• 19th May 2011

The Grove in Wimbledon is playing host to an awful lot of socially awkward looking people tonight, reviewer and artists included, many of us sharing a common interest in Star Wars and nerdy white rap music, and those gathered, many shuffling awkwardly, are here to see MC Lars in a Wimbledon boozer with a rather vast stage nestled on one side of the bar.

Adding to the awkward non-atmosphere is a worrying lack of background music, something Akira The Don, the first support on tonight, tries to remedy as he busies himself, starting a jovial, if not rousing, chorus of campfire favourite Cumbaya.

Most people just squirm slightly.

Thankfully his opening support slot is much better received, quickly hurtling through a number of picks spanning two albums and a vast amount of mixtapes, the sound left a lot to be desired, but the abundant energy onstage and the dedicated fans that had arrived early made the technical flaws seem slightly unimportant, and Akira The Don even managed to get his sing-a-long moment after all, as the crowd roared into life for the repeated chorus of the deceptively poppy Thanks For All The Aids.

Headliner, MC Lars is clearly a well respected, well connected and well loved artist, and for good reason, as he sets up for his slot he cheerfully chats to those near the front of the stage, recognises friends and aquantances in the crowd, checks they had no problems with guestlists and asks how long they’ve been in the country.  He is even such a nice guy that the first artist signed to his own record label, Weerd Science, isn’t just carted across the pond to support his current tour and act as his hypeman on stage, nope, MC Lars democratically co-headlines this jaunt with Weerd Science, their set being a combination of both artists’ songs with no sign of one-upmanship at all.

True to his roots, MC Lars performs aided by backing tracks and visuals played from his own laptop, whilst a live drummer gives the performance a complementary rock n roll element, the trio blast out tracks from each of the onstage MC’s new albums alongside a whole bundle of fan favourites, whipping up excitement and crowd participation with the Edgar Allen Poe-riffing Mr Raven and Supergrass sampling Ahab.

Another of Lars strong points is his tongue in cheek jibes at flavour of the month genres, standing out as strong singalongs despite their comedic nature, songs like Signing Emo and Generic Crunk Rap have long outlived the appeal of the name-checked fads they gently ridicule.

Nice guys, a keen sense of humour, literary references and a fiercely proud representation of underground independent hip-hop all make for a rather niche crowd that creates an enviable sense of good vibes, there is no hype in the room, every act that graced the stage is well loved and extraordinarily well received, and even when the backing beats for a number of songs are inaudible (another case of troublesome technical difficulties) the crowd remain unvexed and the show goes on regardless.

Yet even without sound problems for every other act on the bill, despite the fact that this was MC Lars’ gig, the whole show was stolen by MC Chris, onstage just before Lars, his set was an absolute revelation to me, though clearly not to everyone, as there were a fair number of people in attendance that were highly animated during Chris’ set that promptly disappeared once he had finished.

MC Chris wowed the audience with a self deprecating humour, lovingly produced nerdcore beats and a comedic high-pitched and rapid fire delivery.  Geeks were in their element as Chris rhymed about Harry Potter, ninjas and, on more than one occasion, obscure Star Wars references.  It felt like he was being embraced by his own people, even to his own modest surprise, and those that didn’t know of him already clearly took a shine to him, with catchy and simply grasped choruses and a oddball behaviour, he soon had a majestic hold over the crowd.

I was already a fan of Akira The Don, and was aware of MC Lars and a handful of his tracks, but it was MC Chris that I spent the next day Googling, eager to relive the entertainingly uncool raps about intergalactic bounty hunters.