By Semper Azeez-Harris

Thanks once again goes out to Kwaku for getting me tickets to see Nattyat the Luminaire in Kilburn.

It was a good night characterised by an intimacy brought on by the factthat Natty was back "home", as he called it.

After an absolutely hectic period of touring, he can be forgiven forbeing slightly subdued in the beginning. This however dissipated after thefirst fifteen minutes, and the crowd interaction and energy on the stagequickly surfaced.

Easing his way through tracks from his upcoming album ‘Man Like I' (Atlantic),his post-modern take on the reggae genre was and is very apparent. While hechooses to resist this pigeon holing, his appearance and general attitude doessee you gravitating towards comparisons with notable reggae artists.

In the same instance however, he is clearly not a reggae artists in thetraditional sense. He is a North London brother whose reggae is steeped in theculture of London town. He does have tracks that emit the obligatory serious,conscious themes. But he will also speak about needing to love the ubiquitous"hoody" with an element of humour.

While his music is essentially modern day reggae with slight twists hereand there, he has not seen the need to suddenly speak in a deep Jamaicanaccent. His North London heritage is vocally on full display in his laid-backslightly husky voice.

The uber cool crowd, that you could just as easily be seen at an Adeleor Kate Nash concert, skanked and shimmied to Natty and his band. It is inlooking at his fan base that you can see that Natty has a big future in popularculture. Mixed in culture and colour, he has an accessibility to all badge.

Tracks such as ‘July’, ‘Cold Town’ (and my personal favourite ‘BedroomEyes’) just have that quality that will see them on the play list of stationslike Radio 1 and Capital. That is not to say that those not into popularculture will not also love his tracks. On the contrary, his tracks have anunnerving ability to make you want to sing along.

The fact that he had an appearance on Later with Jools Holland reallyspeaks volumes about Natty. Historically, Jools Holland always has thosemusicians that have been somewhere, or are going somewhere. Natty evidentlyfalls into the later.

His strange, yet successful amalgamation of essentially post modernreggae with his North London accent and his excellent song writing abilities,will evidently bring even greater rewards. How long will it be before he isbig? End of this year, I think.

‘Man Like I’ is out July 21 2008.