Stevie G: Looking forward to a hip-hop summer
D Block Europe will be playing Live at the Marquee in late July.
These days, there’s far fewer big shows, and most recently we have had very little to shout about when it comes to the high-profile acts.
The Cork Jazz Festival brought De la Soul, Talib Kweli, Pharcyde and Souls of Mischief most recently while the Good Room has just completed promoting two sold-out shows featuring Kneecap in the Cork City Hall. All of the above sold out and this shows that the demand is there, even if the success of Kneecap can be seen as a bit of an anomaly in some ways, as they are one of those groups who appeal to far more than hip-hop fans at this point. There’s definitely a demand for hip-hop related shows though, but the Marquee and Virgin Media Park are a bigger step up than the Opera House and City Hall size wise. In the last few days, both venues have announced hip-hop related shows that should do really well here, even though they are catering for very different sides of the gig going spectrum.
Macklemore will be touching down on June 5 in Virgin Media Park, ed by Rudimental, and D Block Europe will be playing late July in the Marquee. Macklemore is a big name in the hip-hop world, and he has achieved quite a bit of commercial success. He was already an established mixtape rapper throughout the 2000s, but he reached international acclaim after a string of big hits produced by Ryan Lewis propelled him into the big league. Hits such as ‘Thrift Shop’ and ‘Can’t Hold Us’ led to huge success and he even won Grammys. One of the Grammy wins was controversially over Kendrick Lamar, but Macklemore had the good grace to apologise to Kendrick, and he is a rapper always respected for his integrity too.
He has been outspoken on social issues and, most recently, he has become one of the very few mainstream American artists who has spoken up on the situation in Palestine. He even collaborated with Palestinian artists such as our own friend MC Abdul, who has big Cork connections. Macklemore will be ed by Rudimental, another excellent live act, for his show in Cork this June. This should be a great show. Macklemore has a fairly decent catalogue of hits and Rudimental have plenty of bangers too.
Meanwhile, over at the Marquee, D Block Europe will be bringing a different style of hip-hop culture this July. This young UK group rose to stardom in the late 2010s and had a string of well-received singles before dropping their debut album during the pandemic. A prolific collective who move effortlessly between hip-hop, trap, drill, and r&b, D Block Europe have had a huge number of hits, and they can even boast an Irish number one. ‘Prada’ by Cassö featuring Raye, was effectively a remix of DBE’s ‘Ferrari Horses’, also featuring Raye, and it is a huge track to this day. This is a very welcome show for Cork, and given that Aitch sold out a few years ago, I’d imagine this will also do well.
Festival wise, we’ve had some announcements too, and Longitude, All Together Now, Beyond the Pale and more have been busy setting up their summer line-ups. I’ll do a proper early season festival preview in the next few weeks, but Cork’s club scene is showing signs of life too. A thriving techno and house scene continues and lately there have been a few more hip-hop options too. I’ll be back in the new look Liquid Lounge for my Jam session on March 22.
I mentioned the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival earlier and the postponed Kamasi Washington show from last year’s festival will finally happen this April at the Cork Opera House. This has been an eagerly awaited show for a long time now, and there are some announcements incoming for this year’s festival too. There would certainly be no Cork Jazz Festival without Jim Mountjoy, who died last weekend, and tributes have been paid to the festival founder, who first helped put the idea into motion in the late 70s on MacCurtain Street. May he rest in peace.
