De La Soul: at St James

Reviewed by REBECCA BARRY

The only things missing from this De La Soul gig were the punch and streamers.

As an excited sell-out crowd grooved their way through more than a decade of their music, the legendary hip-hop trio used every trick in the book to incite a party atmosphere.

"Where's it happening tonight, Auckland?" shouted Dave - the MC formerly named after curdled milk - before launching into Three Feet High & Rising, favourites Potholes In My Lawn and Me, Myself and I.

But if age has mellowed Trugoy enough to have abandoned his stage name, it hasn't dampened his vigour. The big guy on the mic encouraged hand-waving, lighter-flicking and 'De La' chanting as he and mic-buddy Posdnous bounced off each other like lyrical ping-pong balls.

And even though it's been 14 years since that watershed album came out, the audience - made up mostly of white 20-somethings in cheese-cutters and baseball caps - knew all the words.

The singalong continued when they dropped mid-90s classics Stakes Is High and Ooh, DJ Maseo teasingly slipping just a few beats into his vinyl washing machine.

He worked so hard he sweated his marl grey T-shirt to black.

The real party wasn't made official until they announced a feminist-friendly booty call, proclaiming their love for women of all colours, shapes and inclinations.

"I like an ass I can hang on to," said Dave, before pulling a cross-section of the female contingent on stage to get jiggy. Problem, was, some of them didn't particularly want to leave, well not until Baby Phat, De La's musical tribute to the female form, had finished.

It meant that at the end of the gig, the trio were obliged to stay on stage and sign autographs, leaving a slightly befuddled and fatigued crowd - it was a pseudo-Monday after all - unsure whether to shout for an encore or go home.

No doubt the majority of them will soon be heading to the record store to pick up the latest instalment in their Art: Official Intelligence trilogy. And no surprise, that the next one's billed as a party album.