`Refusing to plateau’
With big smiles and even bigger hair, hip hop collective Arrested Development performed a back
to back set of mash ups from their twenty year career at The Junction on
Thursday proving they still have much to say.
The live band plus beat maker dropping samples from a
be-stickered flight case tumbled on stage led by front man Speech in a colourful
mix of Afrocentric fashion for which they are known. Opening with the proverbial `Give a man a
fish’ the band didn’t pause for breath
until 4 songs in with Speech flanked by two backing vocalists styling T Shirts
asserting `Racism sucks’ rhyming his way through `fishing for religion’ and
other hits as a heavy fatback drummer played steady as a metronome.
Releasing their debut album 3 years, 5 months and 2 days in the life of Arrested Development
back in 1992 it was clear from the outset that Arrested Development were
different. With positive lyrics and playful sampling of the likes of Prince and
Sly And The Family Stone the group arrived with a sense of fun in common with
artists like De La Soul, providing an antidote to the bragging and gangsterism
of the era’s B Boys. Indeed Arrested development included girls, and seemed
more like an extended family in music videos which depicted them down on the
farm rather than downtown. Forget the East Coast/West Coast feuding, this was
Southern hip hop.
Thanking the audience for `coming to explore and discover
what Arrested Development are about’ Speech proved as outspoken as ever in his
raps, encouraging community, creativity and respect true to the group’s name
which references stunted progress resulting from racism, poverty and community
self-sabotage.
Engaging the obliging audience in call and response scat
singing, Speech shared the stage equally with the two backing singers, notably
Fareedah Aleem who animated the Cambridge audience on this wet evening with her
West African inspired dance.
The band were tight and good players but the problem with
this gig in J1 was the volume which far exceeded that of the band’s bountiful natural hair.
The mix lacked balance and definition meaning Speech’s
quick-fire eloquence was hard to appreciate whilst the guitar of J J Boogie also
lost nuance.
Nonetheless the group’s stamina was admirable, as is their longevity
and ongoing social engagement which continues through their own Mr Wendal
Foundation for America’s homeless.
Commissioned and first published by Local Secrets magazine
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