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Edinburgh based comedian MC Hammersmith is the world's leading freestyle rapper to emerge from the ghetto of middle-class West London.
I headed along to see his show "Straight Outta Brompton" on the very first day of the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
From the second he steps on stage MC Hammersmith is confident, energetic, assured. He puts the audience at ease instantly, and the atmosphere in the Monkey Barrel Comedy Club is electric. You'd never guess it was lunchtime!
‘Straight Outta Brompton’ is packed with frankly unbelievable improvised comedy raps based on audience's suggestions. On the day I was in he was asked to rhyme with Persimmon, 'do the worm' and even levitate, and he did not miss a single one.
His stage presence, energy and audience interaction are exquisite, and he easily built a rapport with the eager crowd. There was a good deal of audience interaction, but it felt natural, never forced. Hammersmith's ability to take someone's story and turn it into a banging, hilarious, rap song almost instantly is jaw-dropping.
Each rap is performed to catchy hip-hop beats and the sound levels in the venue were perfect - I could hear every word clearly. The use of technology during the show is also done brilliantly, with projections of suggested words and phrases helping to focus and engage the audience.
Hammersmith has a degree in Linguistics and it's clear that his brain works at a speed way beyond us mere mortals. The skill it takes to not only improvise a one hour show, but to do it in rap, and to nail every single punchline, is astonishing.
If you are a comedy fan but you think that you don't like hip hop or rap, I urge you to give this set a chance. It's one of the best, funniest, most enjoyable hours of stand-up I've ever seen. And because it will be completely different every single time, it's a set that you can see over and over again. I've booked to go back next week. Sheer brilliance.
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When and Where?
Venue: Monkey Barrel 1
Time: 12.30pm (lunchtime)
Dates: 2nd – 27th August (not 8th, 15th, 22nd)
📸 Photos: Lance Fuller
About MC Hammersmith
MC Hammersmith (a.k.a. Will Naameh) was born to an English mother and a Syrian father. He attended an all-male, middle class private school in Hammersmith. After escaping this, he took up improv classes and started performing freestyle rap comedy. Although technically mixed race, his middle class English accent and pale skin tone means he has always passed for white. This, combined with his awkward personality, made for the perfect framing device to draw comedy from his hop hop performances.
He has a Master's degree in linguistics, specializing in phonology, from the University of Edinburgh. He was studying at the same time he started rapping. His linguistics expertise helped him become a full-time freestyle rapper, as he combined his love of hip hop with his academic studies into the mechanics of rhyming.
Since then, he has performed at Fringe and comedy festivals all around the world, headlined at major comedy clubs across the UK, and has won multiple comedy awards for his freestyle rap performances.
He also has OCD - in particular to do with obsessive thoughts. He has since discovered one of the benefits of OCD was developing an obsession with rhyming: if he had a thought of a rhyme, he wrote it down. He now has his own personal rhyming dictionary (and memorised it), and at last count it was 15,000 words long!
He also writes and performs scripted hip-hop comedy. His video Posh British Boy Raps in Car was a viral hit gaining over 10 million views on social media. Since then, he has released several more scripted hip hop comedy videos, that also went viral. He is also a writer for acclaimed YouTube web series Epic Rap Battles of History.
Outside of rapping, MC Hammersmith trained in improv at Second City and iO Chicago, the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, and UCB New York. He regularly performs improvised comedy shows in one of the UK's leading improv comedy shows including Spontaneous Potter: The Unofficial Improvised Parody. He has also supported comedy big wigs Jason Manford and John Bishop on tour.
🌟 REVIEW - MC Hammersmith: Straight Outta Brompton (Comedy, stand-up, improv, hip-hop, rap, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023)🌟
🎟️ Disclosure: I am an Edinburgh Festival Fringe accredited media reviewer and as such I receive complimentary press tickets in exchange for my honest reviews. My reviews and star ratings are always my honest opinions.
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