CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE SHOW HERE.

“When the MCs came…” It was the song most of us came to hear, and if you didn’t get there early you would have missed it. To make matters worse, if your taxi got stuck in traffic or your train decided to do one of those – œstopping between stations for no apparent reason manoeuvres’, you would have also missed your second favourite song off that record. GZA/Genius played his classic album Liquid Swords in track order, start to finish, opening with the record’s title track and Duel Of The Iron Mic.

Before those two party-starters were dropped, the Metro was looking barer than I had seen it in a long while. I assume this was down to two main factors – one being that it was a Tuesday night. The second was that we are all still waiting with baited breath for the entire Clan to announce a Sydney show alongside their festival performance in Melbourne next month.

I have my fingers crossed that now the Genius has his show out of the way maybe it could still happen – but I’m not going to recommend you hold your breath. Anyone who has seen the Rock the Bells documentary would know it’s hard enough to unite these guys when they are standing in the same room, let alone flying them across the other side of the world to do it.

Just as I started to feel a little down on the efforts of the hip hop heads in this city, they started to make their presence felt. The room was full by the end of Duel Of The Iron Mic. Liquid Swords is about as solid an album as they come, so all the tracks were killer. But I would have to say besides the two which have already been mentioned, Gold was the other standout for mine.

Luckily at the end of I Gotcha Back, it wasn’t over. The show went on with Wu classic after Wu classic. GZA played bits and pieces of Protect Ya Neck, Reunited and Ain’t Nothin’ Ta Fuck Wit to name a few. He even dropped a little bit of the ODB classic Shimmy Shimmy Ya, which (as it should) picked up a big response from the crowd.

GZA’s stage show (if you can call it that) was very simple: just GZA on a very dark stage and his DJ. He certainly isn’t the most animated MC when it comes to stage presence. In fact, he had his non-mic-holding hand in his pocket most of the time, making him look even more laid-back. He did have occasional bursts of energy, getting into the front few rows of the crowd a couple of times.

Let’s all keep our Ws up in hopes that the whole Clan forms like Voltron and bring da ruckus to Sydney while they are out here next month.