HOW the hell did they just do that?”
The best shows have that sense that you just can’t believe what you’re seeing, and MC Hammersmith delivers that in spades.
West London’s star freestyle gangsta rapper – the Dr Dre of Fromage Frais, if you will – spins a wildly entertaining hour of improvised hip-hop comedy based ENTIRELY on the audience’s suggestions.
And unfortunately for the bold MC, I was in a particularly mischievous mood when I saw him and two of my suggestions were chosen at random – his reaction at having to rap about “looting Greggs” and “rap in support of Liz Truss” was worth the admission alone.
Mr Hammersmith, as I like to call him (at one point he refers to himself as Snoop Mogg) makes the most of his geekiness, rapping, “I’ve never smoked crack but I have smoked salmon”.
His verbal dexterity is simply astonishing and he must think at least two steps ahead, working out the next couple of rhymes while effortlessly landing on the current one.
This was even more apparent when he was challenged to rap but not in rhyme – I have genuinely no idea how he managed to set up each rhyme only to change the last word to a non-rhyming one that still made sense.
Each show is, obviously, completely different and I was just lucky to land up at the one where honeymooning couple Honey and Andrew volunteered to have their first date eulogised in soft rap, complete with autotune, ringing a bell when he guessed right and sounding a buzzer when he didn’t.
Revelatory doesn’t even cover it but hilarious does, and the MC’s nerdy posh-boy demeanour lets him get away with some quite tremendous cheek – and naughtiness.
Just when you think he can’t take it up to another level, MC Hammersmith rounds off the show freestyling a rap that summarises everything we’ve just seen and everyone that’s taken part, and you’re left once again thinking, “How the hell did he just do that?”
MC Hammersmith: The MC Stands For Middle Class, 13.55 Monkey Barrel 1, until August 25 (not 6, 13, 20).
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/mc-hammersmith-the-mc-stands-for-middle-class
