DIZZEE RASCAL CELEBRATES 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS “TONGUE ‘N’ CHEEK’ ALBUM WITH SOLD-OUT SHOW AT GLASGOW’S O2 ACADEMY

★★★★☆ (4/5)

DIZZEE RASCAL PERFORMING AT GLASGOW’S O2 ACADEMY
PHOTOCREDIT: CALEB FLYNN

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the platinum-selling album ‘Tongue ‘N’ Cheek’. Dizzee Rascal has seven dates planned with the O2 Academy Glasgow show being the third stop on his UK Tour, with line stretching down the street with groups of fans singing different Dizzee Rascal tunes to the best of their ability. The O2 Academy was completely sold-out and the people quite literally couldn’t wait to get inside with the typical Scottish weather hitting.

After getting inside, the crowd was already jumping with the support act ‘LZee’ giving the crowd a proper warm-up with a great performance and some crowd work. Before ending their set they got the entire crowd to chant “I Say Dizzee… You Say Rascal”, front-to-back you could probably hear it from outside, safe to say people were excited.

Now for the main event Dizzee Rascal, with a mysterious entrance, the venue’s lights slowly fade into reveal the silhouette of Dizzee Rascal standing inside what I can only describe as an alien-looking portal with a mirror inside of it, with the beat building up to the first song of the evening “Bad Behaviour” which definitely got the crowds energy up.

After some good performances of “RoadRage”, “Can’tTekNoMore”. “DirteeCash”, and “Heavy” all keeping the crowd's energy high we get to “Bonkers” obviously one of the bigger songs to come from Dizzee Rascal the first millisecond of the beat and the entire crowd started screaming and jumping then it went to the drop and were hit with a remix version of Bonkers which I don’t think landed straight away as it wasn’t expected at first but still kept the energy high and finished the song on a high note. Later on, we were given the original Bonkers which was nothing but high energy, jumping, screaming, and all-around good vibes.

During the show, he also played an unreleased song “Gather Around” which had a good reception from the crowd everyone hands raised enjoying the first listen of the new track.

Bringing “You've Got the Dirtee Love” with the backing track of Florence & The Machine, a bit of a throwback to when they performed together at BRIT Awards and Glastonbury in 2010, the crowd singing along really brought a great atmosphere to the venue.

I Could not do a Dizzee Rascal review without mentioning “Bassline Junkie” just an immediately recognizable tune of course with it being one of his biggest hits don't think I need to mention how the crowd reacted to this one, my favorite moment during the song was when they stopped the beat and instantly the crowd started saying the lines Dizzee Rascal said in the music video after the little kid turned the speakers, I think that moment just went down really well with everyone passing the vibe check.

Overall I think Dizzee Rascal had a good performance, great crowd work obviously knew how to keep the energy up with every song, no moment ever felt lackluster and I think he just delivered a solid performance with not much or anything to really complain about.