UKSTREETSOUNDS.COM LAUNCH REVIEW

UK street sounds crash landed into the super retro Cargo club, located under two Victorian railway arches in Shoreditch last Thursday the 1st of December. Cargo is becoming a bit of a favourite for the UK ‘urban’ scene as the venue recently played host to MOBO award winner Sway’s monster showcase and once again the club didn’t disappoint; proving the suitable setting for the launch of ukstreetsounds.com
.The premise of ukstreetsounds.com is simple and yet effective and will enable users to purchase track downloads, realtones, ringtones, video downloads and picture messaging straight to your PC or mobile phone. What’s unique is that it will actually see UK urban artists getting directly paid for their downloaded tracks and not some record label.

On the decks were Shortee blitz (Kiss FM) and Manny Norte (BBC 1Xtra) who were mixing up some of the best UK&US hip hop while a now, fairly sizeable crowd gathered in anticipation for the event to get underway. It was then left to a rather chubby looking Nathan to kick of the launch with an impromptu acapella rendition of the massive Jah Cure hit ‘longing for’ before performing his latest single ‘round and round’. Next was the Choong family who are sure to blow up mainstream come 2006 and commanded the stage like true professionals whilst whipping up some crowd frenzy with ‘memory lane’ and then ‘fall back’. However, they seemed to be feeling the vibe a bit too much and weren’t allowed to perform another song despite the audience wanting more. After that, crowd responses of ‘get meeeeeee’ meet Bruza who once on stage, gave an explicit message to everyone in attendance that he hasn’t been to America and doesn’t talk American and is strictly repping the UK. This announcement raised a few eyebrows amongst the clueless audience but we understood what he meant seeing as we had heard his ‘fuck New York’ track from day, which is going to be a sure fire hit, ‘get meeeeeee’. A major highlight for me on the night though would have to be Meridian and Roll Deep recruit JME who spitted bars at ease and engaged the audience with ‘serious’ which had us all bopping our heads to the beat. He was followed by the vertically challenged Tinchy Stryder whose energetic performance of ‘underground’ ended the first half.

During the interlude Shortee Blitz was laying down the latest Hip Hop and Bashment blazing up the clubs today. After playing ‘Willie bounce’ Cargo felt like it was about to spin deliriously out of control with people doing the 'wacky dip' and 'out and bad' in unison until we came back to the second half of performances.
Following the interlude it was up to Eastside Records new recruit Davinah to represent as the only female performing on the night. The petit, slim framed Davinah probably thought that she was performing at Wembley and took a moment to tell us how happy she was to be here. During her performance of ‘r u ready’ she was joined on stage by two rather young looking female dancers who tried their best to booty shake regardless of the fact that they lacked the key ingredient to carry it out (but I suppose they get 10/10 for effort!). It was then left to what I can only say was an interesting performance from Oblitr-8 to close the showcase with ‘Dot.com’. However, a lot of support was being given to them in the audience mostly by the Eastside Records collective which had me wondering what label Oblit-r8 are on again? Moving swiftly on…

After the performances had finished it was left to Manny Norte and Shortee Blitz to do what they do best and they were mixing up the finest club bangers, which soon had the crowd bubbling while the photographers played paparazzi. In crowd on the night was the sexy girls from Hip Hop Candy, Choice FM, Touch Magazine as well as every other ‘urban’ magazine in the UK. Boywonder Ent want to give a big shout out to Soundbwoy Ent who arrived with us and watch out for ‘never wanna say bye bye’ which will be the big tune come 2006!

Overall, the launch was a good, relaxed night with everyone turning up to support both the artists performing and the launch. For more information on ukstreetsounds.com, you can visit the website or alternatively you can email info@ukstreetsounds.com




BOYWONDER ENT!