Last night saw the debut of Spotify Presents ‘Who We Be’, a night of live music in celebration of the best urban, grime and hip hop the country has to offer. FAULT Magazine was in attendance to see if the event had the legs to take on and further expand where the Apple Music Festival left off.

Taking place at London’s Alexandra Palace, the line-up was a mixture of both longtime seasoned acts like Giggs, Bugzy Malone and Dizzee Rascal alongside fresh faces in the game, Stefflon Don, J Hus and the international rapper of the moment, Cardi B.

Starting off the show was Stefflon Don who has been flying high these last few months with the runaway success of singles “Ding-A-Ling” ft Skepta, “Hurtin’ Me” (featuring French Montana) and no-nonsense anthem ’16 shots’. All the tracks mentioned above went down a treat with the crowd, it was early in the night, but Stefflon Don commanded the stage as if it were her very own headline concert. Regarding showmanship, Stefflon did not come to play! She brought backing dancers, routines, engaged with the audience, discussed her writing process (without boring the audience) and ended on Ding-A-Ling  to a roaring crowd. A hard act to follow!

King of the North, Bugzy Malone followed ending his set by bringing on FAULT Magazine Issue 26 star Tom Grennan on stage for their performance of ‘Memory Lane’.

Tom wasn’t the only unlisted surprise of the night. However, Hardy Caprio who saw success with hit ‘Unsigned’ kicked off the night, but the best surprise award has to go to the man of the moment ‘Big Shaq’. It goes without saying that the crowd went wild for ‘Man’s Not Hot’! In a year where serious Grime has rewound itself straight into the charts, it’s a great feat that Big Shaq had one of the best selling grime singles of 2018, but we’re here for it and more power to him!

Cardi B’s performance started slow, it was clear that the crowd wasn’t too familiar with ‘Lick” which usually features her fiance Offset, but when ‘Bodak Yellow’ began, hoards of people came running back from the bar phones in hand ready to capture the queen of social media do her thing.

Next up came J Hus, who has arguably had the best year. We watched J Hus earlier this year at the 2017 Mercury Awards in which he was nominated for his debut album Common Sense. Despite still being on his debut, J Hus already has enough hits to fill his set time and then some. Luckily for us, he didn’t disappoint after performing hit after hit with highlights being ‘Bouff Daddy’, ‘Spirit’ and ‘Friendly’.

Grime veteran ‘Giggs’ was next up, his acclaim certainly merits him such a coveted time slot. Performing roof-raising renditions of ‘Active’, Lock Doh’ and of course ‘Whipping Excursion’ had the audience in a frenzy.

Dizzee Rascal closed the night with timeless classics ‘I luv You’, ‘Fix Up, Look Shark’ and ‘Jus A Rascal’ – it goes without saying that he owned the stage. With over 15 years of playing stages, Dizzee more than proved his worth as a performer. It is worth noting that he played to a noticeably thinner crowd than the other acts. It could be the audience flooded out to beat the cloakroom rush but more disheartening; it could be the fact that the average birth year of the crowd was around 2000, making them three years old at the time of Dizzee Rascal’s debut release. Although a young crowd is by no mean a negative, quite the opposite, it was humbling to see a whole new generation of music lovers appreciating Grime and Hip Hop; and not just at small underground venues anymore. Not many Grime artists of the mid 00’s played to such large crowds so it’s a credit to the genre to see them selling out Alexandra Palace of all venues.

The UK hip-hop and grime scene have attracted the masses and Spotify ‘Who We Be’ has brought that fact to light in the best of ways. If anything, Spotify has proved that there is a large enough audience in the UK wanting for an event like this. When it comes to music, Spotify has the data to prove that there’s a want and now with the roaring success of their first ‘Spotify Presents’ they’re more than ready to fill that need. The future looks very bright, and we hope to hear more from Spotify ‘Who We Be’ in years to come.