De La Soul review at Colston Hall in Bristol

Posted on: 2017-02-25

Our rating:

People always say London is the place to be but we would rather be in Bristol!


If there was an award for crowd interaction, De La Soul would have won it after their gig at Bristol's Colston Hall last night (24th February 2017).

 

After bounding onto the stage at 9.15pm and announcing there was a stand in for the usual De La Soul DJ (Mason) for the evening, they got straight to it by asking the crowd to bounce their hands in the air.

 

Starting with tunes from their latest album, and the Anonymous Nobody, they quickly stopped what they were doing and shouted to the folks in the balcony: "You see the people at the bottom? That's hip hop - everyone should stand up. If we're going to capture energy, you need to stand up." Most of the crowd then immediately stood up but for the ones that didn't initially, they eventually got to their feet as the hip hop beats got to their soul and De La Soul kept shouting out for every single person to make the effort.

De La Soul

Posdnuos then kept the atmosphere pumped up as he jumped into the pit so he was close to the audience, shaking many hands as he went, and continuing to rap.

 

As the constant crowd interaction kept flowing, the audience erupted into appreciative applause as Posdnuos and Dave said: "People always say London is the place to be but we would rather be in Bristol! You've got some construction going on right now but it's a nice place to be with a great music scene. Shout out to the local musicians."

 

The obligatory hip hop battle eventually commenced with "When we say ah, you say ah" going on as the left and the right side of the venue really got into the spirit of competition.

 

Their new music was well received and the crowd went wild when they did a shout out to the other members of their Native Tongues Posse - including A Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep, Queen Latifah and Jungle Brothers. We were in for a big treat then when Black Sheep took to the stage for several songs.

 

As the set went on, the energy from the stage and crowd continued to flow as Dave shouted out: "Bristol you can get louder than this. You have us in front of you and you act like this happens every day." 

 

Then we went into the realm of some classic tunes as they performed tracks like 'A roller skating jam named "Saturdays"' and 'Me, myself and I' - which got some of the loudest cheers of the night.

 

As they then left the stage and the expected call back from the audience ensued, they came back on and performed 'Ring, ring, ring (ha ha hey)" and an unexpected hilarious few lyrics from Madonna's 'Like a virgin'.

 

As they finally finished their set and people made for the exit, there were several comments about how short the performance was (exactly 1 hour) and how some people felt they had seen them perform better. One person said they had seen them five times and, although they loved the night, preferred their Womad Festival performance a couple of years back. 

 

It's not that this wasn't a good set, because people clearly enjoyed themselves, it's just that they have had better gigs. Overall though, this night proved they're still very much an entertaining force and well worth catching when they inevitably return to the city.

 

3 out of 5 

 

For more info visit www.wearedelasoul.com



Article by:

Kelly Jobanputra

Kelly worked as a journalist for the BBC for 12 years before she changed careers and went into the field of marketing. Having worked at BBC 6 Music for several years, she is passionate about many different genres of sound. Her other interests include theatre, comedy, books, food and days out with the family (she has a young daughter who she describes as a "whirlwind of fun.") Kelly is married to Vik who is a true Bristolian to the core! She is also studying nutritional therapy.