GZA Show @ Koko 9th Dec

Let me just start by saying I am a Wu head to the fullest and GZA's classic Liquid Swordz is one of my favourite Wu solo albums so I was certainly intrigued by the fact that he would be performing the whole album live.

But the night did have it's fair share of problems to say the least. To start with the warm up dj was one of the worst I've seen at a hip hop show for A LONG TIME and I've seen some pretty shakey dudes up there but this guy really took the piss. He barely looked like he been mixing more then about a year maybe and his set was all over the place. Needless to say that he didn't really create the ideal mood for GZA to come on to (infact towards the end of his set he was being booed hard and the shouts of WU TANG were signaling that the crowd had enough of this amateur and wanted the G.O.D to take the stage).

Then without warning a tall wiry figure with a Wu cap on took over the decks and placed GZA's 12" Cold World and propped it up infront of the turntables to signal it was about to go down.
GZA took the stage and from there it was on!! He ran straight through the whole liquid swordz catalogue barely taking a breathe between songs. The sound was pretty crappy though and on certain songs you couldn't really identify them it was so bad Gza stopped rapping through Killa Hills 10304 and Investigative Reports due to this problem.

After Killah Priest performed B.I.B.L.E, the last track from the album, GZA stated that shit wasn't over here and that he would continue performing until they closed the venue and would also take requests on what songs the crowd wanted. While this was more then welcome this was also where it got abit crazy. Gza was charged and began to talk about the state of hip hop right now and the crowd responded by shouting things like "Fuck 50 Cent" & "Soujah Boy sucks dick" (real mature well done for that) and this went on for about 10-15 mins (check the youtube footage below).
I ain't gonna lie this bit pissed me off we all knew why we were there to see a real live hip hop show if you're a fan of the GZA then it goes without sayin that you're not gonna be interested in Soujah boys movement and felt it was abit unnecessary to dedicate a whole part of the show to throwing cheap insults.

To be honest it was a real loose crowd alot of drunk pricks who didn't really understand the significance of the whole event and just wanted to go out and get twisted which prompted me to leave abit earlier then planned with my people who looked equally as peeved as I was.

GZA is still viewed in my eyes as one of the best to ever to do it and even though the show wasn't ideal I'm certainly not gonna let it alter my view about how great an artist the Genius is. And who knows maybe if I was considerable more drunk then I was this review may have come out different.

here are some clips of the show I found on youtube this morning

Dissing Soujah Boy


Duel of the Iron Mic


GZA rapping in the crowd (Bring da Ruckus)