“Yo, yo yo!”, “Let me hear ya say ohhh”, “Now scream!” Yep, for all its regular musical innovation, hip-hop parlance is annoyingly clichéd at times. Tonight, Irish Freestyle champion Rob Kelly is the guilty party. However it’s an effective warm-up routine which coupled with his own rhymes ensures the guilt of the Point party as well. “How many people here are old enough to drink a pint?”, he asks the mainly teenage crowd. “How many people here can get drunk on a pint!?” Judging by the huge roars, more than a few.
Say what you want about youngsters at gigs, and once you pass the twenty-mark it’s easy to develope age snobbery, but the atmosphere tonight is simply explosive. Thus the stage is well set for the entrance of Kanye West, who seems to have made the transition from producer to star performer with few growing pains. Having crafted beats for the likes of Jay Z and Alicia Keys, the Chicago native’s debut album College Dropout has lead to his new role behind the mic becoming a very successful one indeed.
Almost every song is greeted with a huge roar, although ‘Get ‘em High’ and ‘We Don’t Care’ especially get the arms pumping. It’s songs like ‘Jesus Walks’ that really mark West out, however. Insistent, pulsing beats drives lines such as “They say you can talk about anything except for Jesus/ That means guns, sex, lies, videotapes/ But if I talk about God my record won’t get played”. Whatever else, it certainly makes a refreshing change from the likes of 50 Cent getting the (often mainly white) audience to chant “Smoke that Nigger!”
West turns out to be an assured and energetic performer, which is just as well given that the only onstage props consist of the customary nodding DJ and some bottled water, with the backing musicians he usually employs disappointingly absent.
But, just as you’re wondering how he manages to sustain such a tempo for the whole concert, the lights go down after barely an hour, with Kanye racing off across town to get in a late show at Vicar St. Cue collective groans of disbelief around the Point, although judging by the relentless singing and dancing of the previous hour there was plenty of teenage kicks to be had, even if it proved not to be all through the night.