George the Poet, Village Underground, review: Spoken word artist brims with infectious energy

Approximately 10 hours after Ed Miliband unveiled Labour’s manifesto on Monday, George the Poet took to the stage of Village Underground to announce his. It was to be found, he said, in the pages of his book, on sale at the entrance.

An artist selling a book at a gig is a rarity. But then so too is George the Poet. Growing up on a north London council estate, he won a place at Cambridge University. An inner-city upbringing, by way of an Oxbridge education – you don’t find much of that in the Top 40.

The stage is set with bollards and the fluro-orange barriers normally found around roadworks. The band wears helmets and hi-vis jackets. George kicks things off with ‘Wotless’, which tells his backstory, laying out his exceptional trajectory against the norm on his estate, where ‘some fell behind, some fell to crime’.

He got into music, he tells the crowd, MCing grime. But it’s with spoken word that he’s made his name. The genre can come with the whiff of stale beer: open mic night at the Student Union. But acts like George and Kate Tempest are reinvigorating the form, using it to dissect the injustice and paradox of modern British life, and winning fans across the board. George has more YouTube hits than the poet laureate and was nominated for this year’s Critics’ Choice Award at the BRITs.

“This is a road test,” he says, explaining the stage decoration. “We’re testing stuff out”. He ploughs through a selection of his work to date, bringing on old friends and new collaborators along the way. ‘My City’ is a stand-out, supported by an ear-splitting PA and a dazzling light show. Lamenting the sell-off of London to the super-rich, it drew attention to George during the 2012 Olympics.

Live, his style is closer to rap than spoken word - an impression helped along by impressively tight delivery over a 90s-tinged backing track of garage, dance, grime, r’n’b and thrashy guitar.

It could feel like a hotchpotch but his honesty sees him right. You feel like a mate, helping him work out what to keep and what’s not good enough. Most of what he sings is very personal, he explains, before given an account of a teenage girlfriend getting pregnant and miscarrying. It - combined with his raw excitement at being on-stage - makes for an infectious energy.

Having studied Social and Political Sciences (Cambridge’s version of PPE), he comes at lyric-writing with strong rhetorical command. He’s clever with his words. On the page, they can seem academic and a little clinical. Performed live though, his energy and charisma leaven them.

“I'm going to use this platform to recruit soldiers,” he calls out towards the end of the set. But what to? His prevailing message is clear: you are the master of your destiny. This Nietzschean mantra is powerful for isolating that burning self-belief of youth. But, repeated in different iterations throughout, it starts to feel a touch laboured – it’s almost his ‘long-term economic plan’.

There are a few other niggles – a skit involving his phone, familiar from Youtube, induces a cringe. But broadly, on both talent and technique, George the Poet is formidable. Once work is complete, and his performance and repertoire are honed, he shouldn’t have any problem winning votes.