SBTV‘s Shireen Fenner headed to this year’s Camden Crawl festival over the weekend to catch all of the action…
Camden Crawl took place last weekend Friday 20th and Saturday 21st June across many bars and venues. First up on Friday was rising R&B singer Raheem Bakare who played at the Monarch. He wowed the audience with his stunning vocals from his recent EP AWOL as well as covering Sam Smith’s Stay With Me. It wasn’t just me blown away by this future superstar, everyone was captivated as we also all sung along to Bob Marley with Raheem.
Ghetts was up next with his live band and he performed to the packed pub with such raw energy, it was hard to not enjoy his performance. filled with such vigor and freshness. He was joined by Rival, a highly rated MC who performed collaborative track Said To Me with Ghetts, also bursting with liveliness. Ghett’s performed tracks off his album such as Gas Mark 9 leaving us all on a high.
Next stop was Underworld to watch UK rap favourites Krept & Konan. It was disappointing not to see the venue full for them, as these two deserved, but they gave it their all performing their hit Don’t Waste My Time and other tracks off their recently released and critically acclaimed Young King mixtape. DJ Target took over on the decks now to play a mixture of tunes, and Manga joined him on hosting duties keeping the crowd lively.
Itch FM and Big Promo’s Thad Boogie put on a great stage at the Beatrice on the Saturday night. I arrived first to see the rapper everyone is talking about Little Simz. She just released her EP, E.D.G.E, which she showcased some tracks and showed newbies to Simz why she is next in line to blow. Her confidence along with her unique voice, skippy flow and bouncy energy got everyone listening.
Lady Lykez was up next on the same stage, and the North London had the most vivacity of the night. She was like a lioness on stage, encouraging the audience to bounce along with her and chant her lyrics back, she has fantastic stage presence performing tracks such as, I Love My Butt, which celebrates body image, Eurgh and Psycho her recent release which explores dynamics in relationships.
Emily Rawson and Big Ted were at their usual spot in Camden, the Jazz Café where they put on regular hip hop night ‘Supa Dupa Fly’. Here, we checked out Blizzard. With just himself and a keyboard (yes, he plays), along with his charm, he took to the stage performing his own tracks and getting the crowd to sing along to tracks such as Wilkinson’s Afterglow. Our favourite bit of his set was a rendition of Tracey Chapman’s Fast Car nameed Megabus, which was an extremely witty and funny track about the struggles of his journeys from Manchester to London.
Next up, Mumdance and Novelist took it up a notch as it got to that time of the night where we wanted to dance and that is just what we did. Performing at KOKO, Novelist really impressed us with his ability to control the audience and keep them entertained, as well as Mumdance’s too. They both held their own, with Mumdance displaying his unique, futuristic sounds.
Last but not least was Plastician, who had us raving our hearts out to his set. As a pioneer in the scene, we wouldn’t have expected any less than what he gave us switching up between dubstep and grime and a little of something inbetween.
All in all, it was a great weekend for fantastic music, as Ghett’s told us, ““Camden Crawl was one of my best gigs to date, really looking forward doing it again next year. It’s a great festival for introducing new talent into the London scene”. We couldn’t have put it better ourselves (obviously not the performing part, but, hey, you never know!)
*published on SBTV on 25th June 2014
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