RZA @ Prince of Wales,Melbourne (12/02/10)

Sun 14th Feb, 2010 in Gig Reviews

The Wu Tang Clan are hip hop royalty, they have established themselves as a mighty force to be reckoned with and the leader of the clan and head producer RZA showed Melbourne why after all these years he is just as relevant and on top of his game as anyone in the hip hop community.

The show was full of hip hop cliche’s throughout with all the wave your hands in the air to throw a peace sign in the air, but the difference is RZA has the skills and musicianship to back these stupid cliches up, from the minute he hit the stage he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, he started by spraying the entire front row with a bottle of champagne.

Melbourne has been pretty lucky with international hip hop gigs, or at least Wu Tang gigs, in the last six months. We have had almost all of the Wu Tang Clan to our shores, but the RZA is the cream of the crop. His rapport with the crowd was great as he lapped up all the attention he was getting from the very young crowd, towards the end of the gig the stage was being constantly invaded by young girls flashing all kinds of body parts to get autographed and RZA and his crew were more than happy to oblige. It’s rare that you see a performer like the RZA have such a lot of time for the audience there didn’t see to be that much arrogance or ego coming from his performance, RZA was quite happy to let a large majority of the crowd invade the stage and dance and carry on and more less take over his performance.

The one song that sent the crowd into a frenzy was the classic Shimmy Shimmy Ya, with the anthem like chorus ‘Hey, baby, I like it raw’ as soon as the initial beat started the crowd were into it, and loved every second of it. My only complaint for the whole night was the macho attitude that was coming from certain member’s of the crowd, but luckily those people were ejected quickly to let the rest of the crowd enjoy the night.

In the coming months we have another Wu Tang member, Raekwon, gracing our shores which should be another killer show, the list of great hip hop acts coming to town just gets better and better!

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