Well I anticipated a night of exhilarating entertainment, and I got it in spades.
It opened up with the prodigious NZ MC Scribe, who performed a short but incendiary set of blazing Kiwi hip-hop. At the end of his set, not one member of the packed Hordern Pavilion audience was in any doubt that they had witnessed a future superstar.
Jurassic 5 are surely one of the most consistently enjoyable and vibrant outfits in music today. They always seem to put on an energetic, vivacious, pulsating, effervescent show, and last night was no exception - by the end of the night my legs were aching, my arms were jelly and my face bore a huge grin. J5 are masters of whipping a crowd into a frenzy, and always make the effort to pay homage to their hosts - incorporating the word Sydney into some of the raps, Soup also led a sing-along of Down Under, and earlier DJ Nu-Mark spun The Hilltop Hoods Nosebleed Section, even giving it the thumbs up to the delight of the crowd.
Although they are in essence hip-hop, and old-school hip-hop at that, J5 cater to an eclectic range of audience, and I put that down to the sheer pleasure and entertainment factor inherent in their music. At times they resemble a barbershop quartet, not just rapping in harmonic unison but also singing. Also, there is something blithe and carefree about them, a joie de vivre that is infectious. They are not re-inventing the wheel, and they are not trying to be too serious. They just want to have a good time.
We was flippin, they was trippin,
how we was old schoolin' needle to the groove,
hands in the air movin'
and we said to the crowd "This is the place to be,
whether you paid a fee or got in for free"
