Music Blogs

Last year Kwasi Danquah collaborated with one of Brooklyn's nuttiest, Gang Gang Dance, rhyming amid a bewildering forest of percussion and wibbly electronics. Safe to say, it's not a track Tinchy Stryder's team have led with, let alone acknowledged in the little man's clamber up pop's summit. In fact, lest he scare off potential punters, Tinchy has shed any edginess that might polarise the opinion of Radio One listeners - and it's this lack of depth that's seen him shrink in stature when compared to his hero and fellow crossover MC Dizzee.

Whatever Tinchy may have lost in his music, however, he's gained in popularity. This latest stop on his sold-out tour plays host to a throng of screaming mini-skirted teens who raise the chatter by an octave or two, and when the curtain drops the older members of the audience are conspicuous in raising fingers to their ears as they scream in frenzied unison. If this signposts a well-remunerated future then the reaction that greets Stryder's processed rap-pop should have him booked into the O2 within months.

Performing squarely from his debut, "Catch 22", Tinchy aims everything at the crowd he knows he's got - a demographic who will rinse their parent's credit cards buying into the brand. Good job, too. Who else would be driven wild by Butlins-styled t-shirt giveaways or a constant, trancey wash of Eurohouse we thought long extinct? Aside from the womp-womp sample taken from "Dooms Night" on "Spotlight", its (mild) bashment beats and the bubbling bass and juddering chatter of "Tryna Be Me" seems like little more than crude promotion.

In fact, with just a DJ and the rare appearance of a crew, tonight's "performance" is redolent of a live PA in any town-centre club, only with a figure onstage to point mobile phones at. Even the banging beats early in songs like "Warning" give way to a dull, anaemic formula. Where Tinchy seems more comfortable these days is performing his behemoth pop anthems, all of them as obvious and infectious as the last.

"Halo", "Take Me Back" and "Never Leave You" tower over the venue, while "Number 1" and the sampling of Olive's "You're Not Alone" on - ahem - "You're Not Alone" see Tinchy to hit a crowd-pleasing stride, those synths wobbling ever more euphorically. That's all fine for now, but if Tinchy Stryder< wants the kids to keep coming back he'll need to offer more of himself to keep them interested, like the hero he alludes to when shouting "hands up, look sharp."

by Chris Parkin