Gig review: Dizzee Rascal

Published on Monday 5 October 2009 19:08

DIZZEE RASCAL **** PICTURE HOUSE, EDINBURGH

DIZZEE Rascal, the one-time Boy in Da Corner (the title of his Mercury Prize-winning first album from 2003) is finally centre stage on the British pop scene. It's taken him six years, four albums and a radical musical diversion from hip-hop into commercial dance territory, with the aid of Dumfries super-producer Calvin Harris, but he has at last unquestionably made it.

Where once his fans were serious hip-hop types, now they're students and party animals more at home in a commercial nightclub. The latter group packed the Picture House from wall to wall on Sunday night, bathing this still-young venue in the kind of atmosphere it has rarely experienced. That everyone jumped wildly as one and even formed small moshpits during Dizzee's recent big hits Dance Wiv Me, Holiday and Bonkers came as no surprise.

Yet what must have been both surprising and vindicating for Dizzee was the reaction to the hour of material he performed before any of the above tracks appeared.

Some of his opening songs were culled from the new album, Tongue N Groove, and one or two might well find their way to ubiquity over the coming months.

But, backed as ever by just an MC and his regular DJ Semtex, the rapper at last saw Fix Up Look Sharp, Jus a Rascal and Sirens afforded the huge response they've been waiting for years to enjoy.