A 2000-person capacity venue-come-university canteen that has seen the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones; Leeds refectory is an iconic spot. On Friday night it was swarmed with students eager to see the Northampton born rapper Slowthai take the stage by storm, and a storm he certainly delivered. 

The crowds that were flooding the entrance of the union had me a little worried at first — from the moment I went into the venue there were few people who looked even remotely sober and the audience was very male-heavy (not necessarily a bad thing until they’re towering over you and pushing people aside), but from the moment the music started, my anxiety was eased. Slowthai’s charm was infectious, and he soon had everyone moving together, whether they were on the side-lines or smack in the middle of the pit. “There’s one rule and one rule only”, the rapper had barked at the crowd within the first ten minutes, “if someone falls, you help them up.”

The set was almost a backwards journey of Slowthai’s releases. Starting with some of the most well-known tracks from Tyron (2021), the first few songs were heavy crowd pleasers, before he soon veered into the second, slower half of the album. Tribute track ‘NHS’ was an early highlight — the song’s lyrics are pretty desolate but not without a reminder that better days are coming: ‘what’s a flight without turbulence?’. ‘I tried’ soon followed, one of his best songs in my view, and not without the rapper telling the audience that hard times get better, and that no one is alone. No toxic masculinity here, sir. 

The middle of the set seemed a little out of sorts, with Slowthai jumping between energies and teasing unreleased tracks sporadically. At one point he played a feature of himself on a new Fontaines D.C. song ‘ugly’ — a collaboration which had the potential to be pretty cool but fell flat when Slowthai didn’t rap along live but lipsynced the pre-recorded song. Not long after this he teased a new DnB track, which although at first seemed similarly random, actually added a great energy to the crowd. The disclosure-esque sounds were giving the kind of summer festival energy that can never come too soon. 

The show only got more energetic. Support act Deb Never was brought on for her feature on gorgeous Tyron track ‘push’ (a personal favourite), before Slowthai moved into older singles and biggest tracks from 2019 album Nothing Great about Britain. The last half an hour was filled with tender moments: the rapper offered free merch to a girl at the front who knew every single word; he had his child’s sonogram behind him on the back screen; and for track ‘Ladies’ the girls of the crowd were lifted onto shoulders. 

Expectedly, the most awaited songs of the night ‘Deal Wiv It’ and ‘Doorman’ were last to be played and went the heaviest. The rapper wasn’t even thirty seconds into ‘Doorman’ before he called for the track to be stopped and pointed at a guy in the middle of the mosh. “You mate, yes you”, he singled him out and told everyone else to open up a circle around him. “I want you to run laps around anticlockwise when I start this track again”. The second time it played the crowd joined in even louder than before. It’s reassuring to know that Slowthai is an advocate for his gigs to be safe spaces, and even if it meant stopping his last song midway, he was happy to do so. In that sense it didn’t ruin the end of the night but made the last song all the better — ending the set on a satisfying, if sweaty, note.