EBONICS @ Club Fez, Gig Review
Now never having been to Cambridge before in my life, I was surprised to see
the club already buzzing with a good crowd & it was only 10.30pm.
Now my first aim was to get pass the crowd to try & find the DJ box, s
o I could say those oh so famous "I'm with The DJ" word's.
After getting pass the first set of people on the dance floor
I entered into the main room, which is where the dance floor is!
So I was surprised to see, the crowd I had just pushed & squeezed thru,
were not even in the main room..
That's how packed the club was.
After finally spotting Kayper the resident Dj & promoter of the club night, I made my way thru a
heaving dance floor, where she give me the bad news!!!
Jazzy Jeff is not coming tonight!
The term heartbroken might not just be strong enough to described how I really felt.
But since I was also at the club to do a gig review & get a few snaps of the crowd as well,
I carried on with my head held high!
By 11pm the club was full of people of all colours & race & nationally.
Talking to people around the club, it was evident that EBONICS has a strong pull.
There were clubbers from there teen's upto what I would say was there
late 30's (maybe some into the 40's).
Kayper alongside MC Inja had the crowd rocking as soon as they stepped it to the place.
It would be a safe bet to describe these 2 as the Batman & Robin (or maybe we should say say Del boy & Rodney)
of the DJ/ MC world.
Kayper with her skill of scratching & mixing record after record & Inja with his lyrical flow .
One of the surprises was when she pulled out the classic of all classic rap tunes
"Rappers Delight by The Sugarhill Gang".
As soon as the music had started Inja was on top of his game, with lyric after lyric, hyping up the crowd,
at this point 5/6 members of the crown busted into a old skool dance routeing, that carried on into the
next track as well (reminding me of KID & PLAY from the House Party movie's)
Playing tune's like Hip Hop Hooray (Naughty By Nature) Chief Rocker (Lords Of The Underground),
had me partying like a madman with ants up his pants & making me wish I kept my promise to myself to sort all
my vinyl's out into alphabetical order!
At this time, a female member of security pointed my attention to another part of the dance floor was a big circle
& my first thought was "FIGHT", not that I'm a violent person or anything, but when I looked towards the centre of the circle, I was looking at a body popping & break-dance contest going on with members of the crowd strutting
there stuff & trying there utmost to out dance the person before them!
While all this was happening 2 more DJ's appeared inside the DJ stand.
Inja announced that since Jazzy Jeff Could not appear as his brother was in a serious condition in hospital,
back In the States, and that Tricka Technology (Kraft Kuts & Fi Skillz) would represent him,.
The started of there set with LL Cool J's "Doin It" instrumental & they carried on playing instrumental for the next 2/3 tracks, while they were scratching & mixing it up with a wicked combination of CD's & Vinyl's,
I & certain members of the crowd, seemed to thing that 1 instrumental is cool, 2 is pushing it, but to play 3/4 instrumental's back to back??? Sorry geezah's you might be talented, but your in a nightclub & not playing instrumental
for people to try & sing to like if they were in a Karaoke bar/restaurant!
Luckily they sensed the crowd were not really into the whole instrumental thing & moved on to playing a proper club set out of which the biggest was by Terror Squad & Fat Joe "Lean back"!
After a while Kayper arrived back behind the wheels of steels scratching & mixing & the odd super fast rewind
(now I know why they have that nickname), as she was pulling out all the stop's & proving why she is
regarded as one of the top DJ's in the country!
The music changed from Hip Hop to Dancehall & the crowd was going crazy, everywhere you looked people
were grinding, & moving to the sounds of Dancehall/ Ragga tunes.
From the sounds Of Buju Banton to Sean Paul & Elephant Man, it was just getting so hot in there that my lens steamed up & I'm not just on about the camera lens either!
Towards the end of the night came the slow jams, which took it upto the closing time of 2.30AM.
Personally I thought this was one of the best club night's I have been to in along time!
The crowd were dressed upto the max & were friendly & there was no wanna be gangsters or
rude boy's or rude gals in there.
With a mix of all nationality & a place where people come solely because of the music & everyone from the
door staff, the bar staff & the crowd are all chilled out,and willing to pose for a picture,
I can see EBONICS lasting a long time.
Check out the pictures from the night Here