Review: Jonwayne live @ The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool

Image: Jonwayne

Despite being over forty years old and managing to boast a gloriously wide range of characters, hip hop still retains the ability to surprise. And on an overcast evening in Liverpool that assessment proved tellingly true with a show that veered between mercurial genius, classic hip hop beats and rhymes stylings and an awkwardly uneasy relationship between artist and crowd.

The city has in recent months seen the unlikely emergence of a kind of boom bap Tuesday club, with a running list of rap shows taking place on the second day of the week.

Skiddle had already been excitedly in attendance to see Pharoahe Monch and Peanut Butter Wolf throw down classics at the Kazimier, so the more intimate confines of the Shipping Forecast would see us witness Stones Throw signee Jonwayne bringing new gravitas to the term maverick.

The first striking thing about the beat scene producer and emcee is, for those unaware of his resume, his appearance, which certainly earmarks him out as leftfield. A curious combination of outlandish shirts and Games Workshop demeanour, arguably the best way to proclaim it in the twenty first century hip hop vision would be some form of introverted swag, but either way his unique visual style is mirrored by his off kilter productions.

Tonight he's much more pared down from a fashion sense, an attitude that ripples into his stage presence - at first. Hunched over his MPC, he lets his beats do the talking from the off, as skittering drums, crisp snares and some gloriously wide ranging vocal samples fill the room to an always engrossed but barely animated crowd.

Raps are conspicuously absent, with a heavily affected Buckshot screeching during a rework of Black Moon's beat down classic 'How Many MCs' (watch the original above), giving an eerie resonance to aggressive undercurrent in lyrics such as "the devil in my heart yearns for it well".

Aside from that the sample base ranges from classic soul to show tunes, giving the sonic platform for a barely animated Jonwayne to look on to the crowd with a strange look of indifference, nervousness and calculated analysis, whilst the throng he faces seem unable to know how to respond. Which remains a continuing theme throughout the night.

Eventually he starts to stir, which we found out later is due in part to the slowly disappearing contents of the bottle of whiskey to his side. A particularly melodic refashioning of Kanye West's 'Barry Bonds' gets the emcee on his feet, and as he mouths the lyrics to the Chicago rappers record, a ripple of cheers and applause moves the mic action closer.

What follows is at times brilliant, beguiling and blistering, but in equal parts it's, for want of a better word, weird. As Kanye the rapper slowly melts out his presence as a producer continues, with the unmistakable opening sample to one of 2013's finest beats, Pusha T's 'Numbers on the Boards' (above), booming out.

He mentions about being allergic to the floor space in front and ushers the crowd to flood in, before starting to freestyle over the clunking glass of a backing beat well, before interrupting his flow to start again midway.

Whilst his rapping, particularly the delivery and the lyrical content, is undoubtedly top notch, the first two or three songs don't seem as fluid as they should be, and there's scant crowd interaction behind the mic bravado at first (below).

Midway through he drops the standout from recent release Rap Album Number One 'The Come Up Pt1' (below), the muppets esque opening sample bringing the first real rapturous response to a crowd that, to this point, has barely broken out of a unison of head nodding, as hands beat on the ceiling and the anticipation starts to hype up.

"Liverpool are we gonna make this a fucking show?" is the command, and that certainly happens. It turns the tide, with the emcee getting more and more animated which is matched by a couple of over zealous individuals at the front who fire back with a number of shouts which are ambiguous in being heckles or cheers - either way he doesn't like them.

Over the course of the night one slap happy fan gets grabbed and told to stop touching him whilst another is told to shut the fuck up, and this constant unease between performer and audience strangely makes the whole thing more entertaining, particularly when their rambunctiousness nature is responded to by an audience member later on calling them a "soft tit". You doubt that happens in LA.

All the while he gets nicer on the mic, and at one point wanders into the crowd whilst spitting venom to heighten his outsider status in life and the music as a whole, projecting a veneer of animosity. A statement of "you can hate but you cannot deny I am good at what I do" also receives a warm response, due in part to the heavy truth it represents.

And then the encore. Well, the last song, because when Jonwayne finally walks off stage no one is sure if he is going to return, dumbfounded by it all and too stunned to do anything other than watch on, arms folded, in disbelief. 

He does come back on, and utters that it's the strangest response to a show he's ever endured, nailing the overt awkwardness of it all brilliantly to a seas of laughter and, most palpably, relief, before tearing into a final record. Rest assured we all knew to applaud once that was over.

It draws to an end an entertaining but frequently difficult show which showcases leftfield hip hop at it's blunt, uncompromising best - not one for the conformists. Liverpool reconvenes for more hip-hop Tuesday genius for Action Bronson on May 13th, this the perfect prelude.

Jonwayne is Manchester Wednesday 30th April, playing at the Soup Kitchen (head here for tickets).

He also plays the Soundwave festival in Croatia, 17th-21st July.