---
title: Gig Review: Blu & Exile @ Goodgod Small Club
author: Vlad
published: 2013-04-17
modified: 2013-04-17
section: Events
tags: Blu & Exile, DJ House Shoes, gig review, Goodgod, Hip Hop
canonical: https://www.stasheverything.com/gig-review-blu-exile-goodgod-small-club/
source: Stash Everything
---

# Gig Review: Blu & Exile @ Goodgod Small Club

The music of **Blu & Exile** is the type of Hip Hop that resonates greatly with a fan like myself – **Exile**’s jazzy, soulful beats giving the musical high while **Blu**’s lyrics giving you none of the high-handedness that rap music is notorious for. So certainly, all would’ve run smoothly seeing them perform at **Goodgod Small Club** in Sydney, right? Wrong. Oh so very, very wrong.

The fact that **Exile** had to pull out last minute for medical reasons is beside the point, though considering I had a media pass, I felt the sting less than attendees who actually purchased their tickets would have. **DJ** **House Shoes** sufficed as **Blu**’s DJ only insofar as keeping music playing throughout the show, which, by the way, started at midnight instead of its planned time of 12:30am. This wasn’t a problem, but easily could’ve been if you decided to go drinking elsewhere beforehand and come back just in time for it; had you returned at about 12:20, you’d be catching the final minutes. Though you wouldn’t have missed much, nor would you have had much to stay for either.

The energy that **Blu** comes with on his songs was all but present. **Blu** performed the bare minimum in every way, hardly scraping together 30 minutes of stage time. There’s a difference between a performer being cool and being unenthusiastic, and **Blu** was horrifically the latter. He simply did not want to be there, and you could tell from his complete lack of crowd interaction. Now, let me clarify this – I’m not saying he had little crowd interaction, I am saying he had *absolutely* none. The entire duration of his lacklustre performance was spent on the right side of the stage, and his movements spanned no more than a metre horizontally. No high-fives or anything either – in fact, when his available hand was not up his sweater, it was deeply burrowed inside his pants, and at that point you don’t want a high-five lest you end up with a hand full of rapper pubes. Though it does add curiosity for psychological research into exactly why rappers feel the need to canoodle their crotches.

Not only this, but ***ALL*** fan requests that I managed to overhear remained unheard – everything from ***Dancing In The Rain*** and ***Sun In My Face*** to ***Doin’ Nothin’***. As someone who isn’t familiar with all of **Blu & Exile**’s though, I didn’t even need to overhear fan requests, as it’s a given that you deafening applause will follow when the crowd hears what they want. There wasn’t enough weed smoke in the air to keep audiences content with whatever came on anyway. Even so, the bass was so overpowering that it was a chore in itself to differentiate one song from another. So even if **Blu** had listened to fan requests, it would still be a challenge to musically catch the song out.

I’m not an advocate of the hologram performances of posthumous artists, but after seeing **Blu** live and so cadaverous anyway, I can honestly say that some living artists might be wise to undertake such an endeavour. Record a hologram of an energetic show, and just play it at another venue; this would have undoubtedly been livelier than what **Blu**tried to pathetically pass off as a performance in person.

   [![IMG_3296](https://www.stasheverything.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMG_3296-300x300.jpg)](https://www.stasheverything.com/?attachment_id=5363)   [![IMG_3255](https://www.stasheverything.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMG_3255-300x300.jpg)](https://www.stasheverything.com/?attachment_id=5361)   [![IMG_3273](https://www.stasheverything.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMG_3273-300x300.jpg)](https://www.stasheverything.com/?attachment_id=5362)