Pharrell & Uffie

Last Friday I took Eri to Womb in Shibuya for her birthday. We went to see my old hero Pharrell & Uffie (from Ed Banger records) play for the Ice Cream Store 1st anniversary party. It was one of those presents that is really for yourself.

Womb looks small from the outside but is actually pretty huge. Predictably it was crowded with young Japanese hipsters wearing Bathing Ape clothing. The dj's were all playing standard hip hop (yawn), but things heated up when Dj Feedz from Ed Banger got on the turntables. For those of you who don't know Ed Banger is the French record label that is home to Justice & Sebastian and other artists like Dj Mehdi & Kavinsky. If you don't know their stuff I highly recommend checking it out.

He mixed a variety of great electro influenced music, warming up for Uffie to come out and perfrom her current hits like 'hot chick' and 'ready to uff'. They are great tunes and she gave a good performance but the crowd were not so receptive. It could be shyness, but more likely the fact that there was no room for moving. It was just like a peak hour train where you are permanently attached to the person next to you. After a while I was sick of being brushed past and touched so I began to dance out of frustration to clear some space.

The shyness dissappeared though when the man of the hour came out. He has amazing presence and is unfairly good looking. The crowd all rushed forward, girls were screaming, it was like Beatlemania. After a while though the gig had to be stopped, cause some girls at the front were passing out from the weight of the crowd. His gorilla-like security lifted the tiny Japanese girls to safety with ease, and the crowd politely stepped back at Pharrell's request so the gig could continue.

Pharrell quickly went through his hits that he had produced and sung on like 'drop it like it's hot', 'frontin', etc with a dj providing the beats. While he has so many great songs and is a good performer, I got the impression that he didn't really want to be there. The 1 hour set was reduced to 45 minutes during which he rushed through the songs and sometimes barely sang (only the chorus on 'beautiful'). Then the gig ended abruptly and Nigo made a brief appearance, before another mediocre dj came out to fill in the last 2 hours before trains started. Pharrell is super-talented, a good performer and has great stage presence, but he just wasn't into it.