Thursday: Latitude Found
It takes me some time to acclimatise to a festival. Accustomed as I am to fine living and the comfort of a padded theatre seat, straining over the heads of a crowd to see Mr B feels strange and disorienating. Having been lost somewhere between Suffolk and Norfolk with the Gentleman Rhymer only hours earlier, it is comforting, at least, to see him behind the banjolele and not the wheel of a car, wondering why the road to Latitude was so empty.
Although I have seen Mr B at the Edinburgh Fringe, usually as part of a cabaret show or rocking a crowd in a night-club, I have surprised at how well his English re-invention of hip-hop gets across. There are rumours that he was a conventional rapper before he took up the tweed and vaudeville parody: certainly, he has a flow and familiarity with rap’s conventions and absurdities that could only come from a serious understanding of hip-hop history. Yet, ironically, chap-hop is not just funny – ironing out the infelicities of American slang into proper English is a sharp joke – but keeps the crowd frantic and dancing for an hour. His flirtations with the big r’n’b ballad, spot histories of both hip-hop and early rave, the meditations on cricket and toilet manufacturers get jiggy with a self-deprecating humour, swipes at a certain minister’s son turned incomprehensible DJ and a sincere fusion of manners and beats.
The previous act – Intensi-T and Soldier A – represented a less comedic vision of British rap. Intensi-T is a beat-boxer – and bad beat-boxers never make it to the stage, since they would sound like a man humming and making weird noises. Soldier A is a rapper, but bad rappers frequently get up in front of the crowd. It’s a shame – Soldier A is generic and predictable, while Intensi-T can rock the crowd. It’s a mismatch of talents, and the soldier needs serious boot camp to catch up with his partner.
Between the two acts, however, there is a nice spectrum of how UK hip-hop is diverging from its US parents. Mr B has swung over into the variety camp – he will eventually be crooning Acid Ted on the TV, where his knowledge of old and new school will be lost on an audience that likes the funny man with the glasses. Soldier A is aping his ancestors, but straight out of Norwich is never going to cut it. For a music that relies on notions of authenticity, imitation is not flattery.
As it goes, that is my last stop at the poetry tent until the final act of the weekend – Saul Williams. Every time I go past, there are some shouting boys going on about stuff. Perhaps if they bellow loud enough, and misappropriate enough gangster poses, they might stop worrying about the people who called them sissies for writing verse. The number of weird violent fantasies that came out of there, echoing across the muddy plains of Latitude, usually involving the murder of government father figures was less disturbing than funny. When Williams turned up, he was the real thing: a poet in the hip-hop tradition, not trying to be a rapper but using language as a flexible weapon, exposing the machinations of politicians for its self-interest without resorting to a macho murderous bellow.