Just as his love life has pulled him from Hackney to
Chelsea, Professor Green played an intimate gig at Under The Bridge by Chelsea
Football Club last night inventively named "Hallow'Green". Ahem. At least, it
was as intimate as one of his gigs can be – stood mere metres away, blinded by lights,
quaking bass ricocheting through the crowd.
Swigging straight from a bottle of JD, Green performed a
handful of hits to the competition winning (and surprisingly eclectic) crowd. These were taken from both his debut ‘Alive
Till I’m Dead’ and last year’s ‘At Your Inconvenience’ (pictured), though it was his
earlier hits I Need You Tonight and Just Be Good To Green that drew the
biggest cheers. Bantering with the
audience and berating himself for talking too much, he showed there’s a
thoroughly nice chap behind the rough image.
The band brought some empowerment to the music, the drums and bass
especially providing a thunderous beat.
The backing singers, too, did a commendable job, despite the lack of
Emeli Sande for Green’s biggest hit.
The trouble is Green only has a handful of big tracks and, for
all his attempts at rawness, he is a pop artist at heart – particularly in his
choice of samples like INXS and Lily Allen.
The comparisons with rival Plan B are obvious: whilst Ben Drew is
writing authentic riot songs, Green is busy rhyming Pixie Lott with cock. Certainly Green has written tracks that work
in a club environment, as the dancing crowd of this gig proved, but it’s
difficult to take him seriously in light of the competition. It seems if you take the boy out of Hackney
you can, in the process, diminish Hackney from the boy.
3/5
