Meet the Streets
Maassilo, R'dam
20 October 2007
The scope of the Meet the Streets was highly ambitious – three stages spread across the cavernous Maasilo, with music, fashion shows, live graffiti and breakdancing. The musical line up was extremely strong, with the top of both the Dutch and English language Dutch hip hop scenes representing. On the English front, you had GMB and La Melodia, and Duvel Duvel and Typhoon in the Orange corner.
GMB played a strong set, with tracks like Black Woman and Meanwhile connecting well with the crowd. La Melodia, despite being limited to a 15 minute set, put on one of the best performances of the day, with Melodee in irresistible form. My Word has got to be one of my favourite tracks at the moment, it kills the crowd every time it’s dropped. Jay Colin should get a mention as well – confronted with an apathetic crowd, he jumped into the middle of the audience to get into people’s faces for the most emotional and energetic performances of the day.
The two Dutch language artists I caught were a complete contrast. Duvel Duvel drew one of the biggest crowds of the day, but without meaning to diss them, I just couldn’t get into it. Typhoon, on the other hand, was brilliant. Although rapping’s is obviously primarily about the words, it’s also all about the flow and delivery. And when you combine a top flow with a performer like Typhoon, he could rap in any language and it’d be worth listening to. It was a joyous set, and he fully deserved the love he got from the crowd.
Two things stood out from De La Soul’s set (which was as outstanding as usual). First, the amount of people that left after Typhoon’s set. Although they played to a packed main room, it was a little strange that if you’re into Typhoon, you wouldn’t want to see one of the main influences on any hip hop artist. The other thing was the impassioned speech that both Dave and Pos made about supporting your own scene - buying records, going to gigs, keeping your own nation’s hip hop alive rather than just copping the product from the US, which they both slammed for being lame and derivative. When you look at the variety and quality of hip hop coming out of the Netherlands at the moment, you’ve got to agree. Events like Meet the Streets give everybody the chance to check out what’s going on in the country and exposes them to the whole scene – both Dutch and English language. And if it means that someone English will check out Typhoon again, then it’s worked. Bring on next year (but with better food – that Nasi Kip was probably the worst meal I’ve ever had. And being English I’ve eaten some real shit).