PPP at Cargo

PPP at Cargo

18 September, 2008
by: Lowri

Platinum Pied Pipers – the live R 'n' B, soul fusion outfit from Detroit and Brooklyn super bigged up by all and sundry for their debut 'Triple P' – are promoting their latest album 'Abundance' by splashing themselves all over Europe. These guys have had serious industry acclaim. 'Triple P' landed in the top three in the Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards for Album of The Year. ?uestlove of The Roots famously stated 'I made 23 friends listen to the album three days straight at gunpoint…' Their only London date in Cargo tonight, as the five Americans gather on stage the crowd are instantly hushed by how breathtakingly pimp they look.

Wow. White suits sharply tailored against black skin. Pretty fly. PPP have a big sound; hard, urgent R 'n' B, heavy bass inflected with hip hop, electronica and funk with two really energetic vocalists – the crooning cool cat Coultrain and the classic attitooode soul diva Karma Stewart. These two hold the gig together with their energy and continual efforts to incite the Cargo crowd into some sort of enthusiastic melee. 'Put your hands in the air y'all!' is greeted with stoic silence, grim faces and a couple of sympathetic hands (mine included – I've got a heart). The crowd is not big enough or excited enough to react and they've started off way too hard. People are a little taken aback. The Americanisms which hip hop and R 'n' B artists persist with and obviously work well in the states merely highlight how lacklustre the crowd are. 'Come with me y'all! You feelin' the vibe?' Erm….stop drawing attention to us. Get on with your stuff. We'll continue to shuffle around nodding our heads and apologising if we step on each others feet.

The thing is, PPP are really good. Catchy, infectiously upbeat and talented. Quality, live RnB seems to be pretty rare – the smooth synthesized stuff of the charts is a distant relative of PPP's stuff. They start with their excellent single 'On A Cloud' and reel through a few from their forthcoming album but it's their older material which gets the best reaction. In the words of Waajeed, their goal is to 'put some paint where it ain't' musically and this is exactly what they've done.


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Lowri