Looking sharp: Dizzee at T in the Park 2010 Pic: © Drew Farrell
Dizzee Rascal tentatively strums an acoustic guitar, the plaintive sound that emerges quickly complemented by a world-weary, barely audible voice that speaks of life, love and loss. In terms of atmosphere the audience seems akin to that at a wake, mournful and respectful as...
Oh, wait a second, that's a review of a depressed and decrepit Dizzee way forward in 2100, one passed on to me by a mysterious stranger warning of what the future may hold. Instead I'm at the Main Stage on the Sunday afternoon of T in the Park 2010, watching a party-starting Rascal command the audience of tens of thousands with consummate ease. Road Rage gets the crowd jumping along, and Dirtee Cash provokes a fair amount of slurred accompaniment to its brilliant chorus.
The last time I saw Dizzee at T, only two years ago, he was a very different proposition. Infinitely more threatening in the gloom of the Slam Tent, his DIY grime roots were more apparent, with the brutal sub-bass perfectly pitched to floor onlookers and the likes of I Luv U gloriously stark and threatening.
Now he's an established chart-topping crowd-pleaser, and instead of a lone DJ providing the backing he has a full band, brass section and all. He's also so much fun that he provides perfect accompaniment for what was previously a lazy sunny Sunday afternoon, recent hits perhaps straying far too close to naffness for comfort, but absolutely fitting today's breezy outdoor setting.
What remains constant between the two poles-apart performances is that he's superb, and his set is an undoubted highlight of the weekend. (Oh, plus that sub-bass still remains, albeit at more infrequent intervals.)
His calculated move into the mainstream seems vindicated when he also brings out the blistering grime of I'm So Heavy, the crowd reacting wildly to the lurching beat, Fix Up Look Sharp following up to similar effect. Neither of these would have received so wide an audience had he remained in the shadows.
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The mash-up of Smells Like Teen Spirit and Stand Up Tall goes down as well as you'd expect, recent number one Dirtee Disco going down a storm despite - or quite probably because of - its inherent cheesiness, which is pitched up to Lionel Blair levels. The precise populist touch of Calvin Harris collaborations Dance Wiv Me and Holiday keeps up the tempo at the finale, maintaining an epically vast amount of bad boogying in the audience (at least when the excitable attendees aren't leaping about with careless abandon).
It's all ecstatically received enough that Dizzee emerges back for the encore of Bonkers (though I think there was more chance of Jeremy Paxman taking to the stage for a duet than there was of that not being aired at some stage of the set).
Those expecting the lean, mean underground Dizzee may have been left disappointed recently, but those after nationally cherished music celeb Dizzee will have left today's festivities highly satisfied. And as for anyone after an introspective elderly Dizzee, well, you've only 90 or so years to wait...
