Miriah Avila

The thing that impressed me the most seeing Suga Free live was the way that he interacted with the audience, cracking jokes, encouraging us to join in, and thanking us humbly for our support of his music. His career before he went solo was a hip hop duo with DJ Quick, and it was an awesome surprise to see that Quick was performing with Suga Free when I saw him recently. Their chemistry is great, and the way that they were bouncing their energy off of each other made us all in the crowd really energised and ready to dance.
He opened with the title track from his new album The Resurrection which is a great collection of charismatic lyrics, with a conversational style to the delivery. It was exciting to hear it performed live as it’s only just been released, and the audience were going mad for it. Free took time to teach us little hooks and tags from the songs, and shouted out lines of lyrics for everyone to repeat. It was really cool to get involved to that extent, and the way that we were all dancing around seemed to give them both more energy in their performance, as they played for over 2 hours, and maintained their energy throughout the show.
They played from some of their collaborations, as well as Free having Quick support him on tracks from Hi Power Pimpin, and Sunday School, as well as the new album. They played a couple of covers and remixes too which had the audience singing along and loving the atmosphere. It was an amazing set!

They performed awesome . I enjoyed the songs they sang . And I can’t wait to see them again , this was the first time I got to see them perform

‘Soul finger, soul finger, hoo ha’… just one of many hits from the Bar-Kays, their first stint of success from the 60s until the 80s was a time of great success for the original band. But even after their hiatus and their reformation with various different band members, they have still got that smooth soul R&B sound that they were so famous for back in the day.
Something that you can guarantee from Bar-Kays, regardless of their point in history, is that they will give a high energy performance every time. They are so dedicated and invested in their music that it encourages the audience to dance and sing along with them too. The guys are in their late 60s, early 70s now but you wouldn’t know they were a day past 50. Jimmie’s voice was powerful as ever, granted he couldn’t hold onto the high notes as long as he used to, but apart from that they sounded just like their recordings.
It was fantastic to gain an insight to their tremendous journey over the years, and the snippets of stories they told the audience were really eye opening to the industry 40 years ago. They brought a fun, enthusiastic, and musically impressive show for us. If you’re into their music I would definitely recommend catching them live whilst you still have the chance.