Location: WaterFront, Rotterdam
On stage: Pete Philly & Perquisite with Benjamin Herman and Nobody Beats The Drum.
Peeps: Rianne, Lieke, Patrick, Myself

Starting about an 45 minutes later than planned, Nobody Beats The Drum started the evening with some bouncing and body-vibrating Drum ‘n Bass… Two guys that seem to really cooperate behind the turntables, synths and mixing equipment. Their more electro-like pieces were not my thing, but overall they put together some very nice set.

After some more waiting while the stage was re-set, in came the man of the hour… Pete Philly! Performing with his beat-master, producer and cellist Perquisite, backed by a cool Contrabass-player, his DJ (brother) and Benjamin Herman.
Instantly getting the crowd going with “Relieved”, Pete performed some regular and some improvised versions of “Insomnia”, “Lazy”, “Grateful”, “MindState”,”Eager” and some more. The tracks he played with Perquisite on cello and Benjamin on alto-saxophone were impressive. As was his freestyle with, of course, its topic ROTTERDAM… I am still amazed how Pete is kinda underground in The Netherlands, while he is most probably the best MC who raps in English we have here. And he totally seperates from the mainstream rappers in his vocal talents. This is someone with a very soulful and musical voice, in contrast with the rappers that only seem to shout on stage…
I am afraid that Pete Philly is going to be more successful abroad than in The Netherlands in due course of time… and that is kind of a pity.

After this stunning performance the rest of the night was filled with the sounds of his brother DJ… Raphael Saadiq, Chaka Khan, Common, Kanye West, combined with some nice scratching and various other very danceable tracks… Too bad I had to get to the office early… left Waterfront around 2 a.m.

Not strange that Talib Kweli (who joins Pete Philly & Perquisite on Mindstate) has declared them “lightyears ahead of the game”… Let’s hope that they get some more feathers in the butt (Dutch expression…) and become Holland’s main HipHop export product.