Nelly
Thisd gig starte unreasonably early for anyone to get home from their day shift of being a dragon fighter, protecting the universe from alien invasion or just working with twenty kids under three years old in a nursery. Quite frankly, for anyone with a day job. It’s pretty tight to wrap your day up, get home, have some adequate time to get yourself ready for a night out (food, washing the day away, fresh clothes, a cheeky drink or two) and then get to the early finish gig for 6:30pm. I can vouch that it was indeed tight, impossible really, especially if you live out of the city...good job nothing really happened until 7:30.
Then it was time for Sir The Baptist to show Norwich what he’s got. And what he had was 99c of concert venue entertainment. He’s no Lady Gaga. It was soon clear that not being Lady Gaga wouldn’t be something to stop Sir The Baptist putting on the best goddamn performance of his life. The drummer danced like nobody was watching, the DJ proved to all the haters that he did indeed have try outs for West Ham as a kid with a session of impressive keepy ups, and Sir The Baptist banged out a few originals as well as rapping over some well known tracks, even singing along to them with the crowd at times. All of the arena entertainment action, on a shoe string, was pulled out. My first confusing thought was what the hell is this guy wearing!? Up top, he’s fit for a Bollywood wedding, although his bottoms say it’s been a long day on the building site. After a while as confusion dissipates it seemed like most folks had got onboard, now they knew what they were getting, a mash up of some decent tracks with the additional twist of Sir The Baptist bars. This guy would kill at a wedding reception! I for one cannot wait to see his documentary, especially the parts that were filmed on the night.
Then it was time for Nelly. Now this is the third time Nelly has graced The Nick Rayns stage in the space of two years, with his first date in June last year being an instant sell out and leading to the addition of a second city date on that tour, giving any unlucky non-ticket holders a chance to see Nelly in action a few days later. I was a lucky ticket holder for his first city stop, and tonight was miles apart from it. Seems like all the ladies that got the Mercy - UEA bus didn’t return for this year's tour which really wasn’t a bad thing. The place was nicely full of people, friends, students and couples making it pretty easy to move into the pit, get to the bar or loo and back to your spot in the pit again at all times rather than not even being able to see Nelly through the sea of ladies attending and wanting to be seen by the man himself. Nelly and his boys were firmly in my sight tonight. Kicking off with Country Grammar, everyone was off to a good start and ready to raise the roof Nelly style for the next forty-five minutes or so, with classics, well knowns and new ones. The man knows how to put a show on, minus the gimics. Although he did have a backing screen playing the music videos of tracks he was performing, which turned out to be a handy reminder of all his tracks including those that might not be at the forefront of your mind these days. Nelly’s Derrty Entertaiment record label brought you all the backing screen goodness, along with a sting promo every few minutes... just in case you forgot the name of the record label. After his Millionaire encore, he threw his Nelly DNA-laced vest out to the crowd, and it didn’t even start a fight. Everyone who didn’t fancy the following 80’s night was out and on their way before 10pm.
Will Nelly be back in our fine city again? Who knows. If and when he does come back, I’d say it’ll probably a tame night...especially if it’s an early bird start again.
