BBC Electric Proms
Dizzee Rascal
The Roundhouse London
21/10/09

Dizzee Rascal is a rock star. This is apparent from the moment he bounds onstage at Camden’s Roundhouse, resplendent in regal red and black and backed by no less than a full band, choir and orchestra. A lesser performer would have shrunken before our eyes when accompanied by such a tour de force of musical talent, but the boy from Bow holds his own throughout, with a dazzling display of genre defying mash-ups, instrumental reworks and original tracks from his eponymous debut, ‘Boy In Da Corner’.

Dizzee’s more recent work with Calvin Harris and Armand Van Helden has been unashamedly commercial, with tracks such as ‘Dance Wiv Me’ and ‘Holiday’ minimizing his MCing skills in favour of chart-friendly dance beats and singalong choruses. Tonight, forgoing both his newer poppier persona and his gritty grime origins, Dizzee takes things to a new level, switching grime for grunge and substituting commercial dance for latin and reggae beats and crashing instrumental crescendos. The orchestra works beautifully throughout the set, from the choirboy choruses on ‘Jus A Rascal’ and ‘Dream’, to the floor-shaking, spine-tingling double bass and strings on early track ‘Brand New Day’, which along with a rousing cover of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Bulls on Parade’ and the sample of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on ‘Stand Up Tall’, showcase Dizzee’s increasingly tight and confident vocal abilities, and show that he, like Jay-Z, can stamp his mark on any genre but still maintain his hip hop credentials.

This diversity is reflected in the crowd, with audience members of all ages and backgrounds united when Dizzee cheekily remarks “here’s one you might know”, before launching into a frenetic country and western style intro, complete with slide-guitar solo, which has everyone going inevitably ‘Bonkers’. ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’, the track that gave Dizzee his first hit, finishes the evening, proving that whilst he is a bona fide superstar, he has not forgotten the ‘Boy In Da Corner’.

Laura Vevers