30 June 2008

Glastonbury: Jay-Z

This man has caused the most controversy at Glasto in ages. People, including myself, think that having a big American hip-hop artist as a headliner at Glasto would turn it into a dangerous, hip-hop fuelled annual event where there is no longer a place for indie. Which would be a shame. Glasto has always been a place for indie bands, usually from the UK.

But at least he was better than Amy Winehouse.

Yes, he put on a bit of a show, probably had the best video screens of the whole festival and got the crowd going.... but what the heck was he talking about? He was going so fast that I had no idea what he was rapping about, and the only song I had any recollection of from the past was "99 Problems". The rest was a mix of samples and rapping at 100mph with more expletives than you could shake a stick at - although, I only actually noticed most of these when, a day later, they showed a few songs and took out all of the swearing, which was incredibly weird but incredibly funny!

Watching the set on TV was strange because no matter how hard the camera tried to find a black face, they failed! There were incredibly small pockets but the vast majority of people were white and all of them seemed to say that he was "incredible". Hmm.... Wonder if they actually understand what he's talking about.

Having sat through his whole set, I decided that although it certainly wasn't as bad as I thought it could have been (perhaps because it wasn't as heavy on the gangsta scale as I thought it was going to be), I still don't think that acts like Jay-Z suit the festival. Hopefully next year we'll go back to the indie scene and all will be forgiven.

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