Saturday 18/02/06 Skinnyman, Sway @ The Coven, Oxford

This show was part of Sway's tour to promote his 'This is my Demo' album. Along with songs from said album, he treated us to some rhymes over big American tracks. J-Kwon's 'Tipsy' became an anti-drinking yarn called 'Pepsi', but Sway is too late. Being on hip-hop time (1 am start) meant there were many drinking casualties way before he gave us this sobriety rap.

It seemed like the caffeine in the soft drink Sway promotes gave him A.D.D. symptoms, ditching many songs before they could shine. One short record that did shine tonight was Sway's verse on the Mitchell Brother's 'Harvey Nicks'... "When I shop at Harvey Nicks, everybody thinks I'm a star/ because I wear my rented blazer, and I step out of my rented car" It's The Who's 'Substitute' for the internet generation. Maybe not, though: "Computers are rubbish, throw them out" Sway then launched into an acapella of his anti-file-sharing song, 'Download', which sounds out-dated post-Arctic Monkeys. They have both huge file-sharing and sales numbers.
                    
Sway's word-play is brilliant, verging on the autistic... "More people are recognising my face/ check me out on Myspace" How are we going to go there, since we chucked out our computers? Pens and paper must have advanced dramatically, recently.

Skinnyman shared the first part of his performance with some of his proteges, 'Mad Fam'. This is either generous, or a ploy to make himself seem a better M.C. One of Mad Fam's songs is called 'Change your Heart' and sounds like Sway's 'Pepsi', but without the humour, it could easily be a Christian rap record.

Skinnyman's album 'Council Estate Of Mind' was a solid set, but one-dimensional. Subject matter varied from crack, to whores, to crack-whores. Skinny seems to have lightened-up (no pun intended) since then. On one acapella he told of a boy that stole a moped and kinny's crew then started their Crazy Frog impersonations. Seeing everone crease with laughter at Crazy Frog was like watching water turned to wine, a highlight of a set high on energy.