NME Carling Shows’ rap night was a mixed affair with stripping!

The NME Carling Shows are great for presenting wide range of genres and talents and Saturday was for... rap. But, not just any, not your common variety but a tad different and distinctly lacking on violent imagery. Unfortunately, due to parking problems and lengthy queue to get in, we manage to miss the opener, Skinnyman.

But arrived in plenty of time for Princess Superstar. Usually touted as ‘Female Eminem’ – she is astute, vulgar and can drop a rhyme – but, that doesn’t really make her a ‘Lady Shady’, unless… Commencing the show in a long black dress she ripped it off to reveal a skimpy top and mini-skirt; later on she donned a leather cat-suit! What New York rap-ette does is more akin to Pink, with Kelis’s realm not being that far; Princess’ single ‘Bad Babysitter’ will make her a chart-star but beyond that…

Dilated Peoples, now this is a chillout rap. This lot is really something else, an underground (attitude wise) act that records for a major label, with music spliced in such a way to take you to some unexpected places. It gets you high without reaching for something illegal or otherwise. They’ve already recorded so many great rap-tunes - ‘Third Degree’, ‘On Deadly Ground’, ‘Pay Attention’, ‘The Platform’ and, from the current ‘Expansion Team’ disc, ‘Worse Come To The Worst’ – to shame many a contemporary rapster.

Bubba Sparxxx is another else due to hailing from the Southern part of da USofA; his take is different to what’s been going on on either side of the country. Bubba’s debut album ‘Dark Days, Bright Nights’ contains some musical solutions that certainly give it an altered flavour. But, can this corpulently bodied man cut it live? The answer is unknown as he graced the stage for all of 20 minutes!?

Performing singles ‘Ugly’ and ‘Lovely’, the big-fella had time to lose his top and then his bottoms that his manhood was hardly covered. Following the shortness of his set the fans got really unhappy and started to boo loudly and pelted the stage with empty cans to vent their disapproval for the short set.

For what was supposed to be an evening of entertaining rap from the perfumed garden of da hood, it almost turned into a Saturday that was made for fighting!