Rinse | Born & Bred made a return to its home of Haggerston Park on the weekend of June 4th and 5th. Still in its second year, the festival is now a collaboration with Rinse FM – an apt pairing as both celebrate rave-inspired dance music and sound system culture, with sounds such as Grime, Drum & Bass, Garage, Jungle, Hip Hop and more. Rinse FM is known for bringing the pulse of the underground to their myriad of listeners, and has become one of London’s most respected stations throughout their evolution from ‘Pirate’ to ‘FM’.
Arriving at 3pm on the Saturday, we firstly made our way to catch Grime producers Heavytrackerz set, over on the Lord Of The Mics stage, where they played an array of heavy-duty tracks such as Bonkaz ‘We Run The Block,’ Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Stop Dat,’ Kano and much more. They held a good crowd and kept the festival go-ers moving.
It was over to the main stage next to catch Manchester Grime representative Bugzy Malone, who has definitely put Manny on the map with his new album. Bugzy’s stage presence was great to watch for such a fresh artist, and he commanded the people’s attention as he growled out his trademark bark along with tracks ‘Watch Your Mouth,’ ‘Gone Clear,’ ‘Moving’ and more for his fans.
New talent in the form of AJ Tracey and Big Zuu were next on the agenda back over at Lord Of The Mics arena. These two showcased their emceeing skills and also how to hold a crowd, and keep them entertained. Their delivery and energy was ferocious and they had the audience hanging on and repeating every line back to them. They may be new, but they’ll definitely have longevity.
As we waited for P Money at the Lord Of The Mics stage, we were informed he would now be on the main stage as Wiley hadn’t turned up. We made our way over as the one and only don Slimzee stepped up to handle the DJ duties and P Money the MC duties with a Fuxx Azealia Banks t-shirt on as he said to the crowd, “gunfire on Azealia Banks, can’t be dissing the mandem and the girl dem over here.” He continued to spray bars alongside Wiley’s little brother Cadell and Blacks. The crowd loved every bit of this hype set and didn’t seem too bothered at Wiley’s no-show.
The last but not least, the most iconic moment of Rinse | Born & Bred had to be the headline artist Congo Natty who opened his set by paying tribute to Muhammad Ali, with everyone in the audience singing along to Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come.’ He then went into pure jungle tracks such as his own track ‘Junglist,’ Shy FX’s ‘Original Nuttah’ and much, much more.
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