Green Monkey with support from Bunny & The Banned Its, Cull & Steve Loc
Wednesday 30th September 2015 – Limelight 2, Belfast
Although Ormeau Avenue may be a long way from Compton, the 30th September saw Limelight 2 play host to a mid-week extravaganza of local hip hop talent.
Kicking things off was the sharp suited local rapper/producer Steve Loc. Taking to the stage around 9:15, the MC treated his opening spot like an arena headliner, commanding Limelight 2’s stage through his eight song set. Loc’s thick beats and streetwise verses brought a sense of authentic Belfast grit to the night’s proceedings, with numbers like ‘Addiction’ (‘music is my addiction’) sounding particularly at home in the brooding club setting. That said, Loc’s remarkably comfortable and good humoured stage presence was typified on family affair ‘Sunshine’, where he was joined by cousin Frank. The summery number saw the two MCs trading verses and harmonizing on the chorus like a ghetto Simon and Garfunkel.
Next was local beat-boxing extraordinaire Cull, who was recently selected for the 2015 Beatbox Championship in London. Warming up with spine-chillingly accurate vocal impersonation of a drum kit, from cymbal, snare to tom-tom, he then treated the bewildered audience to a journey through modern dance music, beginning with pitch perfect a capella trap music parody. The set’s highlight was undoubtedly when Cull was joined by guest vocalist Ciara Donnelly for a superb homage to modern dance pop. Smashing his short set home with classically styled drum and bass ‘cover’, Cull’s ability to replicate seemingly every kind of musical genre using solely his mouth surely caused clenched buttocks among every producer and ‘real’ musician in attendance.
Hot on the heels of their recent EP release, Bunny & the Banned Its brought their cartoony brand of righteous rap and roll to the stage at 10:45. Opening with ‘Fate’s Infant’, they quickly moved on to covering their new EP, with the punky ‘Super Smash Foes’ sucking in the now sizeable crowd towards the Limelight stage. Magnetic frontman Bunny Martinez (typifying the band’s outlandish stage get up in denim cut offs, oversized ice hockey jersey and winged eye liner that would make any scene girl proud) was in his element, whether replacing his trademark bunny-eared beany with an Uncle Sam style USA top hat to hammer home the political message of fourth song ‘Open Your Eyes’, or firing bag fulls of BATBI wristbands at the delighted audience. By the time of Bunny’s ‘Lose Yourself’ moment ‘Remember The Name’, the jersey was off and he prowled the stage in his denim shorts like Iggy Pop modelling his summer collection. With the EP out of the way, BATBI paid homage to Shady’s influence with a note perfect rendition of g-funk classic ‘Forgot About Dre’, from Bunny’s on-point mimicry of both Dre and Eminem to the Banned Its’ superb adaptation of Dre’s beats to a full band performance. Rounding off the night with new song ‘Peach Beach’ and old favourite ‘Ganja Ladies’, the Banned Its’ anarchic brand of tongue in political rap and chaotic punk-funk is a gleefully fun live treat (seriously, every band should have a French saxophone player), and warmed up the crowd perfectly for headliners Green Monkey.
Remember when the Red Hot Chili Peppers were good? Green Monkey do. Four Belfast soul brothers who perform hard hitting 70s flavoured funk with delightfully witty, B movie dialogue worthy raps courtesy of frontman MC Coolikedat, they sound like the house band in Quentin Tarantino’s wettest dream. They opened with a slick instrumental, with the front man weighing in with slick Chronic style g-funk keyboards, before launching into Eddie Murphy referencing funk jam ‘Fuck Years’. Featuring a bassline from Ciaran Buchanan so sleazy it would make Bootsy Collins blush, Coolikedat details his sexual prowess in such lurid detail to make Rick James sound like Cliff Richard. Although he may look like a lanky, ginger-bearded Belfast native, the jive-talking MC insists he’s ‘blacker than James Brown’, and his in-character between song banter struck an immediate chord with the crowd. They followed with ‘Superfly TNT’, a spikey yet playful cut that sounds like the best tune the George Clinton-produced Chili’s of the Freaky Styley era never wrote: guitarist Eamon Donnelly alternates between driving metal riffs and scratchy funk like the bastard child of Tony Iommi and Nile Rodgers, with the tune also featuring Coolikdat’s impressive Curtis Mayfield-esque falsetto. Third song ‘In Effect’’s thick groove drew Limelight 2’s crowd onto the dancefloor, with menacing blaxplotation fantasy ‘Hush’ cooling things off. Full funk was returned on next two numbers ‘Darkside’ and ‘Fix’, aided by Michael Smith’s Bonham style drumming.
After Donnelly tuned his guitar to ‘drop dizzle’, the crowd was sent into ecstasy by the unmistakable opening bass riff of Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name Of’. The unexpected but perfectly placed cover had the crowd bellowing the sing-along chorus back at the delighted frontman. The crowd was now in the palm of Green Monkey’s hand, and they sailed home with the laid back ‘Young Bloods’, the electrifying ‘Trouble’ and the Kool meets Sugar Hill Gang party anthem ‘Time To Get Up’. Green Monkey rounded off the night with ‘Dollars’, where Coolikedat’s a capella intro was followed by a pummelling riff from Donnelly that threatens to take off Limelight 2’s roof. The band celebrated their triumphant set by throwing copies of their EP to their funkadelic followers to crown an excellent night of local rhyme and rhythms. Belfast may be lacking a lot of things right now, but thankfully flow is not one of them.
