LIVE REVIEW: Pilerats' Battle Rats: Hip Hop Edition

Pilerats did it for Perth’s Hip Hop culture, putting on a new event series that showcases the 6k’s best and brightest and invites them to it battle it out for a $1,000 prize and a Pilerats promotional campaign.

Held at the Hip Hop cave Jack Rabbit Slims, the night opened up with beat spinner DJ Profits, setting the mood for an exciting and vibrant night ahead. Following this, to warm up the stage was the conscious and on point LC Mckenzie. His song ‘Night after Night’ was an emotional out-pour on his own personal life and ambitions to be successful, while still having to endure working night shift after night shift. This was quite a beautiful song and a favourite for his set.

Up next was Freo native Mali Jo$e — a well-known figure and MC in the Perth music scene, who dropped his songs ‘Mistakes’ and ‘Hand in Hand’, cementing himself as a 6k heavy hitter. Alongside his good friend and producer OJC43, Mali jumped the stage with the best opener of the night, in my humble opinion, and proceeded his performance with confident and smooth movements, playing crowd favourites like ‘Mistakes’ and ‘Show Love’.

Sowdy!! Now this dude… I spend my data bill streaming his single ‘Running Up’ featuring the amazing vocalist Andrea Onamade. His high energy performance makes for great adrenaline, forcing the crowd to match his vibe and stay on his energy level. If you paid attention that night, you would’ve seen 6k rapper 506 run around the back of the crowd and jump on the mic to join Sowdy for their track ‘Everywhere’, and what a sight that was. Having released the banging tracks ‘Big Time’, ‘We’ and the aforementioned ‘Running Up’ this year — I’d say Sowdy is on a roll.

Making our way to 506, he played his classic laid back setlist, which brought chill vibes through emotional music. With my personal favourites ‘Bond’ and ‘Teacher’, 506 is no stranger to the stage as his relaxed movements coupled with at times energetic songs balance out the performance extremely well. The vibrancy his music has is like no other, and the mood he sets over the crowd is electric, making him a contestable act for the cash prize.

Following after was Figuero Jones, well known for his drip as well as his melodies. With a nonchalant attitude, Figuero lets his music speak volumes for him. Just coming off the release of his latest album 9 Grand Show he played fresh tracks like ‘FR’ and ‘KGFLOW’, which are dark, ominous and make you feel like a supervillain. Figuero finished off his performance with elegance and ease, making for a very bejewelled and shiny set.

Ending off the night was the bubbling Young Jaycee, and he brought a crowd. This year Jaycee has demonstrated the ambition he is well-known for — releasing a music video along-side Perth videographer Justplay Media to drop his most recent song ‘RAWR’. Young Jaycee had the best crowd interaction by far, demonstrating a strong sense of firepower in his performance. He was never afraid to talk to his audience between songs and even shred on his guitar to end the set.

As it came to the end of the night, tensions grew throughout the crowd to find out who will take the title of the People’s Choice and the Judge’s Choice awards. There were no poker faces when I shot glances at the artists in the running. Due to his energetic stage presence and great crowd interaction, the Peoples Choice award went to Jaycee, while the Judge’s Choice went to Mali Jo$e, who took home a whopping $1000. Both were well-fitting awards, for two extremely talented artists. The night all up at Pilerats was a great representation for Perth’s hip hop scene!