If you’d have predicted 15 years ago that Peckham’s Giggs and US rap mogul Diddy would one day share a stage in Shepherd’s Bush, you might have received some strange looks. Road-rap legend Giggs half-talks quintessentially British bars (“Walk in the party sporting Armani / half of the crowd’s all snorting my charlie”) sounding like someone who smokes 40 a day while driving through south London drizzle. Diddy, meanwhile, is all exuberance and flashy catchphrases, the shiny suit-wearing personality that helped launch the careers of everyone from Mary J Blige to the Notorious BIG.
Yet UK rap’s ascent to the mainstream is such that it feels natural for them to share a stage. “We could have done an arena, but we wanted it to be intimate and a real party, bruv,” reveals Giggs to the adoring sold-out crowd, whose ticket fees are donated to charity. The hyper-confident, black-tracksuit-wearing MC then launches into the hell-raising sirens of Whippin Excursion and his landmark verse on Drake’s KMT, its Batman punchline screamed back by the crowd. Giggs’s posture on stage is resolute, like someone taking a final stand.
