Elsewhere: Hip-hop heaven? Hell no

By GRAHAM REID


If there's a worse band on the planet than Spymob then make a point of seeing them - they must be hilarious.

Regrettably the four-piece Spymob - who opened for NERD at the cavernous Brixton Academy in London on Sunday, for reasons which later became apparent, - were deadly serious (and deadly dull).

They proved that bands fronted by bald keyboard players who consider Sting a songwriting role model (and you thought no one did?) are not to be encouraged at any cost.

There was, however, some amusement to be had watching a bass player who had carefully adopted every cliche in his manual: Foot on the Amp Moment; Legs Apart Stance Moment; Mindless Boogie Head Nod Pose and so on.

Spymob were an unusual choice of opening act for NERD, who are essentially the hot-shot hip-hop team of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka the Neptunes, whose credits include Snoop Dogg, Britney and Justin Timberlake.

A couple of nights previously, NERD had invited Timberlake onstage in Scotland and so expectation in the capacity crowd of 5000 - some of whom had paid upwards of £45 ($120) to ticket touts outside - was high that they might again bring on some heavyweight pop star.

After an impressive set by an unnamed beatbox exponent and much of the hip-hop equivalent of "Brixton, are you ready to rock?" (i.e "Yo, everybody make some expletive-deleted noise"), Williams and Hugo took the stage to an enormous roar.

And that was about it really. For most of the stop-start song raps the rapturous crowd assured them that yes, they were having a good time tonight and yelled back "Hell yeah" on command with a few "Yos" thrown in.

It was disappointing stuff - delivered with support from Spymob who proved they were really the Spin Doctors, right down to the bass player's dumb woollen hat and their beards.

It was a night of greatly indifferent hip-hop - especially if you'd queued round the block in the rain holding your expensive ticket - but then there was Timberlake.

Most bands wait to bring on the special guest right at the end but Timberlake was on within 10 minutes and stayed the rest of the night.

He apologised for the weakness of his voice but delivered a crowd-pleasing Rock Your Body and, with Williams on drums, a skeletal version of Senorita from behind electric keyboard.

Then it was bringing up the ladies from the audience to shake some booty (which took an age), more "Everybody say 'hell yeah"' and so on.

As the Neptunes, Williams and Hugo have redefined pop to prove it need not be as vacuous as Girls Aloud or as desperate to please as Evanescence, and NERD's albums are cracking stuff too.

But given a stage and an unquestioning audience they descended to hip-hopcliches.

That didn't stop the crowd loving it - when will you see Timberlake in such a small venue again? - but after around 80 minutes, when everyone spilled on to the streets, having endured Spymob's opening set ("They must be a Warners' band," quipped my cynical companion) and a dozen too many "Hell yeahs" I wandered around hoping to catch my ticket tout and politely request at least half of my 45 quid back.