After what seemed to be the longest day ever – flying from Heathrow to Washington, and then to JFK – Corrie and I headed to Times Square for the sold-out Mos Def show...
On arrival, we were greeted with a queue stretching around the block, and this was a good hour before the doors were due to open, so we skipped dinner and joined the surprisingly well-behaved, orderly line...
Approximately 15 minutes before the doors opened, we were joined by fellow Brit’, Bone, who we’d arranged to link with – by now, the queue had stretched around the next block and was way out of sight...
Once the doors opened, we moved pretty quickly, picking up our tickets on the way, and got in to the venue... Bone, on the other hand didn’t have quite as smooth a journey in - dodgy ticket tout dramas – but joined us inside eventually...
The joint filled up fast and eventually the support act took to the stage. With surprise, unbilled DJ backing from none other than Just Blaze, Jay Electronica proceeded to rock a carcrash set that had the crowd confused – at times applauding the artist and others booing him... The whole performance was bizarre to say the least, with Jay sloppily forgetting and false-starting lines, and even the unexpected appearance of Erykah Badu couldn’t save the show...
After a lengthy DJ interlude the crowd was treated to the headline act... Mighty Mos Def, backed by 2 DJs, energetically hit the stage, much to the delight of the full crowd, singing ‘New York, New York’...
The show was excellent, with Mos working his way through a number of new unreleased tracks amongst some more familiar joints, with interludes to charismatically chat with the crowd and toy with the video backdrop...
While the show was as good as any of the other times I’ve caught Mos Def live, Corrie and I were suffering the strain of a ridiculously long day, so dipped early and didn’t catch the end of the show, but what we caught was incredible...
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