Live review: Sugarhill Gang @ The Masque

Posted on 29 May 2010
By Kraig Heymans
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The burden of being a one-hit-wonder is probably one of the hardest to shoulder in pop music. It completely destroys some bands, yet can encourage others to develop.

What then of the Sugarhill Gang? Hip-hop’s first pioneers, and a band that can quite safely boast having produced the world’s first hit single to feature MC’s rapping along to a sampled backing track.

Visiting Liverpool for the first time, the Sugarhill Gang started their set in the Masque off in a bombastic and totally ridiculous fashion, with minor hit single 8th Wonder.

The whole night seemed to be full of expectation, until the entire crowd realised after Fast-Lane that in the whole of the bands 31 year career, they had only had about 4 singles that anyone had heard of.

The band too sensed this, and bizarrely donned instruments and performed a 30 minute mid-set mini-gig, paying homage to some of their favourite artists. The sight of Wonder-Mike on bass guitar playing Crazy In Love was a surreal one, but it began to wear quite thin, especially as the band was indulging itself in a completely outrageous and self-indulgent Cameo cover.

Before it could become too much to bear, the band gleefully took up their position at the mic stands and launched into their second biggest hit single, Apache. At this point the band had re-won the fairly nonchallant audience, and redeemed themselves further by finally playing the hit everyone had come to see.

Though some of the lines in Rappers Delight seemed somewhat dated, (especially HenDog reciting Big Bank Hank’s classic lyric ‘6”1 and tonnes o’ fun”, when in actual fact he was around 5”5…) the single still showed that all members were talented MCs, and above all, complete party animals. The only shame is that fame only found the band for a few years.

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