As 2011 comes to an end, the team at Flavour Magazine gathered TWELVE acts under the roof of Hoxton Square Bar And Kitchen for Flavour live: End Of Year Bumper Special. With StooShe, Lioness and AKS on the bill, on Tuesday 22nd November Bea Alessio faced the cold and joined the crowd at the east London venue to see who could bring the “flava” to the stage.

As ‘I go hard in the motherf**kin’ place’, whenever someone screams “live music” and “press list” I am there, even when I’m not familiar with any act on the line-up. Courtney Buck and I arrived pretty early (call it professionalism) and, as the room was filling up and the stage set up was being finalised, we flicked through our copies of Flavour magazine for a quick catch up with Maverick Sabre, Sincere and Big Sean.

Thirty minutes later it was show time *insert Scrufizzer’s sirens noise here*.

The smiley host who loves shopping (according to her T-shirt) introduced the first act of the night on stage. Part of Frosted Ice Inc, rapper Mighty opened with a quick acapella dedicated to his daughter (he gets points for that) and moved onto some bars about his struggle to come out of the hood. Okay bars but nothing impressive (we’ve heard it all before sorry).

Following up, AKS accompanied by a full band blessed our ears with an outstanding performance. I’m sure he won some new supporters after the show, especially when, although stressing his loyalty to hip hop with ‘A House Called Home’, he switched to afro beats and had the front rows going down low. The south Londoner wrapped up his performance introducing each member of the band literally making me heart live music more than ever.

Still high on life, it was Lioness’ turn to bring her roarness to the stage and, before she kicked off with her cold bars and tight flow, she complimented AKS for his performance. She immediately jumped on a dubstep vibe with “Mona Lisa” to mellow it out with ‘Better Me’ featuring A.L. (who unfortunately couldn’t make it). As her time was up, she left the crowd with her top freestyle about abortion.

Next, Jaye Parson. LOL.  

As the awkward performance came to an end, The Trinity Band had to come straight from Derby to uplift my spirit. With the singer going blind with the falsetto and the MC getting the crowd involved with his yardie vibes, they definitely did raise the energy level in the room and, as AKS did, they had the crowd on lock.

BIG!

Finally it was time for the edgy south London trio StooShe to bring their pop-urban vibe to the stage and they kicked off with the clean version of the song that got them signed, ‘F*ck Me’ erm I mean ‘Love Me’. I can’t deny I was disappointed as there were no under 18s in the room (maybe they have been sensible with the virgins them, who knows). With the mics too low, Alex, Courtney and Karis had to sing from the top of their voices still delivering a great performance with ‘Whatta Man’ and their forthcoming single ‘Betty Woz Gone’. The irony was that wit StooShe the crowd went stoosh. Probably they expected the usual r’n’b act. Again who knows.

As StooShe got off the stage and there was no sign of a break, my back and my legs couldn’t take it anymore and the idea of other six acts due to perform at quarter to eleven on a Tuesday night just, well, scared me off.

Final verdict? I only have couple of honest suggestions for the Flavour magazine team. First, don’t let your host drink an undefined number of glasses of champagne (it avoids awkward moments) and then, next time seven acts maximum will do and include breaks PLEASE.

Apart from that, it was all right STILL.

Hats off to the organisers and look out for Flavour Live coming back bigger and stronger.

www.flavourmag.co.uk

WORDS: Beatrice Alessio