R & She/Tipsy, 28th March

So, a gay R & B night, especially one that plays nothing but tracks by women can rightly be described as pretty niche. But what a popular niche that is!

Monthly at Tipsy is R & She, a clubnight covering just such a niche. Doors open at 9 and by 11:30 the place is already a sweaty mess. Tipsy is one of those basement clubs that is basically just a space, a bar and a soundsystem, no more no less. Everywhere else is for dancing, and so it is used. They warned on their Twitter feed that it gets busy and to get there early. We made a concerted effort to get there before 11 and I wouldn’t say it was very busy at all. Half an hour later and that had all changed. I was so pleased we got there that little bit earlier as it meant we could dance with a bit of room. We do like to spread out when we're dancing! And everyone was dancing straight away - the music defied you not to!

Especially with such a strong start – Amerie’s 1 Thing, Beyonce’s Naughty Girl and Aaliya’s More than a Woman made an appearance. It mostly stayed at that level although there was a weaker point in the night where we noticed they were cheating a little – playing remixes of songs made famous by men originally. For example Pretty Lady by Savana.

But other than that it was pretty solid – we bumped and ground to Nina Sky, Destiny’s Child and lo, not very long after I said I would love them to play a song by Cassie, so they did!

I don’t know if Tipsy has air conditioning but if they did it could not compete with the sheer number of bodies and the heat they were creating by moving. After a while, you just had to give yourself over to the sweat. It was all part of the fun! Naturally we stayed to the very end, even when my feet had more or less given up on me. I was happy to take a seat and sit-dance along. Fabulous, darling!

Hip Hop Karaoke, 21st August

Oh my word, I had such a fun time at Hip Hop Karaoke at the Social!

It is what it sounds like. Karaoke, but all the song choices are rap songs. All of them. They've got loads to choose from, and if they don't have your jam, you can request it in advance. They have crowdpleasers like Jump Around and Baby Got Back to Biggie and 2Pac and they're all online with difficulty ratings so you can get an idea for what you want to do (and practise!) before you go if you want. 

The MC is pretty fly for a white guy – he’s a mix of hip hop/ironic nerd and drops the MF bomb like it’s going out of style. He doesn’t partake of the karaoke himself, but is there to make the evening even more entertaining and ensure that everyone gets at least one cheer during their set, even if they’re failing miserably.

For that’s one of the great things about it. Yeah, there are definitely people who go every week, who don’t even need the words and who are mini rapper superstars in the making. But there were also plenty of people who’d never been before, and plenty of people who were just rubbish.

It’s actually trickier than normal karaoke, even with the easiest songs because all you have is a piece of paper with the words on it and then the DJ drops the background track. It’s up to you to figure out when to come in, and if you lose your place it can be pretty hard to catch yourself up again. But the crowd is really supportive, and most of them will know all the words better than you do if you’re not feeling that confident so can kind of keep it going until you get back into it. Having said that, there were at least two performers that just couldn’t even get through half of it, and a couple more that did finish, but I don’t think you could call what they were doing throughout the song ‘rapping’.

But that makes it funny and that’s why it’s so popular. It is on every week and every week it reaches capacity. We got there at 7 and already most of the good tables had gone. By 9 there was a queue outside and some of my friends couldn’t even get in. If you are thinking about doing a song – sign up early. The karaoke doesn’t start until 9 which gives you plenty of time to drink enough to muster up some courage. But if you wait until you’ve got enough alcohol in your system to sign up, you’ll find that they’ll run out of time before they get to you. Sign up early, and then just trust that you’ll be pissed enough to get on stage. I think I signed up to do my song at about 7:30 and I didn’t get to do it until just after the interval at gone 10pm!

So, they have one interval, and before and after they play top notch RnB and hip hop tunes. If you like nights like Supa Dupa Fly or Juicy, but maybe crave a bit more interaction with your dancing, then this night is for you. Hell, if you love this kind of music this night is for you. Or if you just like watching people make fools of themselves in a friendly place, this is for you. Loved it! One of the best weeknight activities out there.

Juicy, 22nd February

If I were going to throw a hip hop/R n B night I probably wouldn't pick the room in the back of a pub to host it, especially if that pub was the Shacklewell Arms, a hipster/indie pub in the heart of Dalston.. But that is what Juicy have done for their monthly club nights in London. 

But let's be honest, if the music is good and everyone is dancing, then the actual venue is low on the list of priorities. After a cheeky couple of bottles of wine in Farr's (still love that place) we headed up to the Shacklewell and had another before going round the back at about 11. It was definitely on the empty side, and there wasn't anywhere to put our coats. Not happy. When I'm at an R n B night, I am there to DANCE and I don't want outer clothing hampering me. 

We laid claim to a corner of a bar and stashed our stuff while we had a few drinks waiting for the place to fill up. Which it really did! I'd say by midnight the place was pumping. 

I don't think I've ever seen a whiter crowd at a hip hop night, but I wasn't particularly surprised by this given the neighbourhood. I guess hipsters like RnB after all. Shame they don't really know how to dance to it! Still, in some ways, watching them made the night more entertaining. And they were playing the good stuff. Timberlake's Rock Your Body, Dre and Snoop's Still Dre, even ABC by he Jackson 5! Unfortunately, they weren't playing quite enough of each track. It wasn't as infuriating as Notting Hill's YoYo but I would still have preferred to hear the whole track before moving on. It would almost get to your favourite bit and then .. no die! Next song!

That's not to say we didn't have a good time. We did. At about 2 am or so one of my friends started to make noises about going. 'One more song', we said, dancing, but then the next one would come on so it was 'after this one'... then the next one would come on... You can see the pattern.

Supa Dupa Fly and Juicy aren't exactly in competition with each other - they aren't held in the same place or at the same time, so I don't really have to make this a competition and choose between them. And in fact, I'd happily go to both. But I AM going to make this a competition and say that Supa Dupa Fly have the edge - it gets held in a club that feels like a club, but most importantly for me - they play the full songs, and long may they continue to do so. 

Supa Dupa Fly, 14th June

I have loved R n B my whole life but these days I don't tend to go out to clubs that play it. Mostly for want of a fellow RnB lover, but now that my friend Alison is in the country, I thought I would take advantage of it and get down to a night that promised 90s and early 00s hip hop and RnB. With the flyer listing all the artists I love, I was pretty sure ahead of time it was going to be an awesome night.

We didn't get there until almost midnight but there wasn't a queue to get in. We were charged £10 as opposed to the advertised £8 entrance fee but not wishing to start the night on a bum note (or be refused entry) I kept that to myself.

As you walked in it was still fairly empty, this being because everyone was already on the other side of the bar getting down, hands in the air, smiles a plenty as the DJ played all the songs you want on a night like this. While we were waiting at the bar to get served (by a very friendly girl bartender) we missed several songs in a row that I wanted to dance to - Beenie Man's Dude, Mr Vegas's Heads High. And then they launched into some 2Pac as we were sipping on our vodka cranberries.

And then it was time to dance like the rest of the crowd were. Everyone was clearly having such a good time - it was like a house party in full swing. It was joyful.The DJ Emily Rawson from Rock the Belles - female, white - was up on stage with the MC doing his bit, random girls were getting up on stage to dance along. It looked like a whole host of fun. On each side was a screen with crazy visuals in neon colours letting you know you were at 'Supa Dupa Fly' and interspersing that with Missy Elliot images. It was very busy on the dance floor, but after a couple of hours the crowd started to thin somewhat - which me and my friend just loved because we are not shy about eating up any extra space on the dance floor. We have very little shame. 

I wish I could remember more of the songs that were played, I just know there wasn't a dud among them. I think Usher featured. Sunshine Anderson definitely, earlier on in the night. There was some Justin Timberlake and Ginuwine... the list goes on. And so nice, after YoYo at Notting Hill and the random night at the Social we went to ages ago, not to have them cut off after thirty or seconds or so! And yes, Moonlighting plays similar music every Saturday and I did have a good time there, but it was a little skeevy if memory serves whereas the Jazz Cafe was a classier venue. 

We stayed until the end and, proof if proof were needed of how friendly and lovely everyone was, the emcee ended up giving us a lift home!

They do a night in Brixton at Plan B as well, which I may check out, although it's a little more out of the way than the Jazz Cafe is for me, and various events - they're making an appearance at Lovebox, and the Rivington Street festival soon - which I just managed to get tickets to yesterday. Can't wait. 

Area, 2nd March

Did you know Area is a gay club? Actually we did, but thanks for checking. Repeatedly.

We'd finished our meal at Dans le Noir and headed into the night to Soho. It was 11:30 pm by this time, and our options of places to go, without paying a cover charge, were diminishing. After the obligatory wandering around and wasting even more time, we went to G-A-Y late. What a mistake that was. I was with one of my best friends from home, who is gay, and his boyfriend, and the cheesiness on offer in this place was even too much for them. Add to that an appalling sound system and some clientele who had seen better days (I hope), it didn't make for a happening place to be. After one drink we ditched and got a cab to Area.

Our cabbie was pretty friendly but hadn't heard of Area. We explained where it was and he told us it sounded like it was where 'all those gay bars were'. Yes, we nodded, smirking, chances are it was there! He dropped us at the start of this gay area (perhaps not wanting to spend too much time there) and we walked up to Area. Area is next door to/part of Fire, another club that I haven't yet been to. We were pretty sure we were in the right place when we saw the seven foot black guy replete with what looked like plastic orange flames on his head, massive spiral boobs and a gimp mask. We got in the queue which consisted of just us while the door staff made completely sure that we were aware we were about to enter a gay bar. They singled Stephen out particularly and asked him at least twice if he knew it was a gay place and if he was ok with it. I eventually had to show them the stamp on my hand from G-A-Y Late to prove to him we were cool with it! Considering the Vauxhall gay clubbing scene isn't exactly a place you can stumble on, we thought all this double checking was a little over the top.

Love a bit of podium action

And so we were in. Area is massive. There were three different rooms of music, two of which have a bar, plus an area at the back with a stained glass window, which was mostly empty apart from a couple of guys canoodling. Actually, this was the problem with the place - for such a large venue, there weren't enough people in it! My favourite room was the one playing house complete with live bongo drummer, but very few people were dancing in this one, which meant I sacrificed it in favour of the other rooms where the atmosphere was better. The second largest room was playing cheesyish commercial pop and rnb, and the third and largest room was playing straightforward house music. While the cheesy room started off as the most popular, it was the largest room which ended up having the most people in it. Well, it is where the podiums are and they're always a crowd-pleaser. We flitted in and out of the two bigger rooms for most of the night, though when the music in the second room started to get recycled and L-U-V Madonna came on for the second time, we spent the majority of the time in the third room. Towards the end of the night, they closed down the other rooms and shepherd you all into this one anyway.

I don't really mind whether a club is gay or straight as long as I like the music it is playing and it has a good atmosphere. I felt like Area had potential, but was just too empty. Maybe Saturday night it runs full strength. Music-wise, I was happy to dance but it didn't get right down into my stomach and make me want to jig with abandon. Considering it's so out of the way as well, I don't think I'll be heading back in a rush.

YoYo at Notting Hill Arts Club, 6th October

Another one I read about in Time Out’s 1000 Things to Do and one I have been very keen to get to. Unfortunately the only people I know who I thought would like to accompany me to this live elsewhere and I had to wait for the arrival of one of these friends to coincide with a Thursday night. Happily, this happened while Alison was here and she is into a bit of hip hop, r n b and general bass-heavy music that constitutes YoYo. I was very excited. Yet I had some trepidation. We had ended up at The Social the Wednesday before at their hip hop night (we thought we were going to an indie night, but no matter) and we ended up infuriated with the place. Apart from the fact that there were far too many young nubile girls gyrating around for my liking, the music policy was gash. They played some great tunes, but only snippets of them. And the MC talked continuously over it all which meant you couldn’t get into a groove on the dance floor. We worried a bit that this was the way of things on nights like this, and we were perhaps too old, with longer attention spans than the youths of today, to appreciate it and ergo YoYo would be a disappointment. Unfortunately, it was just that.

We first met two of our friends at a lovely pub called The Champion not too far from Notting Hill tube station and drank copious amounts of a lovely Pinot Grigio. We were nicely liquored up when we made our way down into the club. Entrance is guestlist only but you still have to pay. I’d put our names down a couple of days before and we duly paid our £5 to get in. I quite liked the club. It was a good size and there was a good number of people in it. I was accosted several times by girls asking me if I had a spare hairband they could have, which I found quite strange, but that’s neither here nor there. What is, is the fact that they subjected us to the same ordeal that had befallen us at The Social. No more than 40 seconds or so of each song. We counted. If you’re familiar with the song What’s Your Fantasy by Ludicris and L’il Kim – sing/rap the chorus of that and that’s how long they played each song for. How are you expected to dance to that? We couldn’t. I like mashups and remixes but this was too much.  We had more tequilas and tried our best but it didn’t work. I was very sad about this night. Very sad. And then at the end it got a bit electro/housey, which I like but it’s not what I expected from that night. Clearly we had to go back to the hotel and drown our sorrows.