AKIRA THE DON is already on stage and is squirming inpatientantly in a tired Nazi themed outfit, looking every inch the nu- Kid Rock. Then again, he is a former music journalist, and lets face it, journalists are never short of words, and journalist-turns-musician is not always a smooth transition. Take Gay Dad for instance: though maybe we really shouldn’t dig up those old bones.
Over hip-hop beats, The Don raps incessantly. Tonight he airs his 4 track EP (imaginatively titled the First EP). An advertising victim might describe him as a marmite of an act if ever there was one: either you'll not be able to get enough of him or you'll detest his flavour with a passion.
Lyrics like “I had a magic jumper, it said magic" will put you in the picture of what's (not) going down here. If we were feeling kind, we could suggest "The Drinking Song" could have universal 'appeal', accompanied by a full band, but in this Chas and Dave style pub sing-along underpinned by a lush nursery rhyme sample and a chorus that Fat Les would consider heroic (“its a drinking song, its a drinking song, if you don’t like drinking you can sing a along, but if you do like drinking well it can’t be wrong everybody likes a drinking song”) it leaves rather a lot to be desired.
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The four song set ends in a energetic band-fuelled trash thrash fall out. It's OK, but by then our attention has waned and it's all too little too late. Hip-Hop has always been funny and the current wave of low brow rappers like wannabe Wu tangs GLC or ex-miner turned rap artist MC Pitman are treasured for their agenda of slyly hilarious home truths and overtly lurid language content. The Don is in the same category, but probably won't even sustain these acts limited longevity.
OK, I grant you he'd argue he's not to be taken too seriously, but where this self proclaimed "Rap Morrissey" is concerned, this joke isn’t funny anymore. It's wearing thin already.
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