De La Soul @ Metro, Sydney 5/5/09

Last week saw De La Soul's 20 Years High And Rising tour hit Sydney's Metro Theatre, and damn, it was good. I caught them last year at the Beachdown Festival in Brighton UK when I played there with Black Grass and thought they were good, but here, they were on fire. Got there nice and early, which was great as Jessy had forgotten her ID (they're mad strict on that shit over here - everyone has to show it, whether you're 18 or 80) and had to go through some bullshit before they let her in. Support came in the form of Jurassic 5's Cut Chemist, who pulled out some insane turntable shit, as well as some less good live shit with the help of an emcee who I didn't really rate - I didn't even catch his name, but he didn't do anything that made me want to research further...

De La came on around 9:30pm, with a 10-piece band, and immediately started bringing the heat. Eye Know, Say No Go, Potholes on my Lawn - all present and correct, Pos and Trugoy rocking the crowd with an effortless swagger that can only come from years of constant touring and work in the studio. After about 45 minutes of constant classics, the band had a break, leaving the trio to keep things moving on some two-emcees-and-one-deejay shit, pulling out Ooooh amongst others. Next they pulled a surprise, Pos giving a little background to the Native Tongues shit, before dropping the Flavour of the Month instrumental and introducing Dres from Black Sheep, who proceeded to kill it with that and The Choice is Yours... definitely a highlight of the night. The band came back for the second half of the show, bringing down the house, before De La Called time on Sydney. Except they didn't. The crowd knew they weren't gonna leave us like that, and after 10 minutes of constant noise, everyone came back for the encore, Maceo's manic screaming laugh beginning a floor shaking rendition of the Gorillaz Feel Good which got the place going off. Add to this Ring Ring Ring amongst others (sorry - my brain was fried by this point - I just know that it was dope as fuck).

If you get a chance to catch De La on this tour - make sure you do. They probably won't be touring for too much longer after this one, so this could be the last time you get to see this era-defining group in a live scenario.

Anyway, here's some pics from the night...