Gig review: Rizzle Kicks, Corn Exchange, Edinburgh

IT SEEMS to be the simple things in life that make Jordan ‘Rizzle’ Stephens happy. In the event of a fan throwing a chocolate biscuit on stage, he encouraged his audience to “make some noise for Wagon Wheels!”

Rizzle Kicks

Corn Exchange, Edinburgh

Star rating: * * *

Spotting a man in the crowd dressed as a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger, he enthused: “I used to love them back in the day.”

Elsewhere, he laid it on thick with an atrocious Scottish accent and a barely better take on James Bond, while wearing a Daniel Craig mask, for an unlikely mid-set take on the Bond theme.

Brightonian rap-pop duo Rizzle Kicks – Stephens and Harley ‘Sylvester’ Alexander-Sule – don’t create music that inspires deep thought or convinces the listener they have any intention of breaking moulds, but it manages to stay the right side of offensively commercial for all that.

Backed up by a live band with the very welcome sound of a trumpeter amid their number, the gangly pair of Brit School graduates delivered a set which watered down large tranches of pop history into commercially drip-feedable form, from the macho funk of Demolition Man to the trumpet-abetted skank of Traveller’s Chant.

In places it was as bland as formula chart pop gets, but the pair’s infectious energy won the day. Before a two-thirds-full Corn Exchange, their highlights included a cover of Ed Sheeran’s You Need Me, I Don’t Need You, the old-school rap of Stop With the Chatter and standout Mama Do the Hump, with a burst of the Beastie Boys’ Fight For Your Right to Party during the encore hinting at who it is they clearly dream of emulating.