1Xtra Live Review

Jules Marks

Bonnie and Clyde would be proud of the robbery witnessed at London’s O2 Arena for Radio 1Xtra Live. In some cases things are just too good to be true and no event has been more evident than this absolute shambles of an evening. Prior to tickets being released, I could not believe my luck. Some of the biggest names in urban music from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean - headlined by Chance The Rapper - were set to grace the stage in one of the most prestigious venues in Britain for the cheap price of just £28; less than a ticket for Chance’s last show at Brixton Academy. Yet with a massive fifteen artists billed on the lineup (plus Popcaan who cancelled on the day), none managed to excite or inspire to the level at which I was expecting.

Doors opened at 18:00 and music started at 19:30; we arrived fashionably late at 20:30, hoping to have missed one or two of the smaller acts that, respectfully, I was not that interested in seeing. Neither 1Xtra or O2 had released any set times and the only information I had was Chip tweeting that he was on at 20:00. Little did we know that by the time we had arrived, nearly half the acts had already performed for about ten minutes each. On the lineup photo, Ella Mai and Jorja Smith were second and third tier artists, yet in reality were given three songs each at the beginning of the night; this isn’t necessarily their fault but as fans we expect to see more. As we entered the arena, MIST was also making his entrance on a quad-bike; by the time we had gone to get a drink he had finished. This happened again with Davido. Already I felt robbed. Not only had acts been cancelled but now people I wanted to see had basically only been there to promote the show rather than actually entertain any of their fans; how good a performance can you do in three songs?

From the acts that I did get to see something was becoming abundantly clear; the UK is so far behind the US. In a society now where it is easier than it has ever been to release music, the majority of the British artists on show seem to have forgotten that performance is important. Yxng Bane showed to a crowd of 16,000 people that he cannot sing without heavy editing and autotune, D-Block and Headie One just rapped over a backing track with no effort to get the crowd going, whilst Charlie Sloth put in his nomination of ‘DJ Fraud of the Year’ by pressing play and mixing the fader up and down at the end of every four bars. Stefflon Don was the only performer who could take any credit of trying to put on a show, bringing out a stage full of choreographed dancers whilst she recited from a throne. Cringeworthy interludes from 1Xtra hosts and personalities such as Mistajam, Snoochie Shy and the most irritating person in the world Charlie Sloth were dreadful and were almost there as a reminder that at least the music was somewhat better than their terrible hosting.

At last it was time for the American acts, as two of the top rappers in Pusha T and Chance The Rapper closed out the show. With a measly hour between them (plus Charlie Sloth doing the worst hype job I have ever seen), there was little time for audience participation and the pair only had time to run the hits. Push mostly performed tracks from his new hit album Daytona that emphasised the gap in quality between the US and UK rappers on show, but was ruined by the rapper claiming he had the album of the year in between each song like a toddler who wasn’t receiving enough attention. Finally, the act we had all been waiting for was set to come on. After five minutes of the worst stalling imaginable from that man Charlie Sloth (he really was that terrible I cannot stress it enough), headliner Chance The Rapper finally made his appearance. Opening with arguably the worst track off of his most recent album Coloring Book in ‘Mixtape’, Chance then proceeded to play every song he has released in 2018 in what seemed like a cry to remind people he was still relevant. None of his classics from Acid Rap, Surf or 10 Day got a look-in, nor did the majority of Coloring Book, but he did find time for his feature on that dreadful song ‘I’m The One’, which is so formulaic and boring it may as well have been made in a laboratory. He seemed to forget that he had fans from before Kanye was interested in him and basically used the entire headline slot as a promotion for his own image rather than to entertain a crowd.

As we walked out the O2 Arena, my opinion was that this was the worst concert I had been to all year. In hindsight, I think it might be even longer than that. I was barely entertained and on reflection feel like I have been conned out of £28, which the idea of it now being Charlie Sloth’s pocket makes the entire event worse. From the poor promotion to the dreadful performance, there was almost nothing good about this night. Moral of the story; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is and I hate Charlie Sloth.