The RAP Party at Litro Weekender photos

Words and pho­tos by Aaron Lee

Poets Inua Ellams and There­sa Lola host­ed an evening of spo­ken word and hip hop on Sat­ur­day night at Water­stones on Tot­ten­ham Court Road, as part of Litro Mag­a­zine’s Litro Weekender.

Four guest poets – Vic­to­ria Aduk­wei Bul­ley, Caleb Femi, Dzi­fa Ben­son, Charles Obiri-Yeboah – and the hosts, per­formed two pieces of poet­ry each, intro­duced a pair of their favourite hip hop songs, and sparred over whether it’s Nige­ri­ans or Ghana­ians who cook the best jollof rice.

Poet and direc­tor of the forth­com­ing Moth­er Tongues series, Vic­to­ria Aduk­wei Bul­ley, per­formed her pieces ‘Revi­sion’ and ‘The Unbelievables’.

Caleb Femi per­formed ‘Jos’ (work­ing title) and ‘In Defence of Gig­gs’, the lat­ter inspired by neg­a­tive reac­tions from some vocal Amer­i­cans to the grime artist’s appear­ance on Drake’s playlist, More Life.

Dzi­fa Ben­son drew the audi­ence to her with her phys­i­cal per­for­mance of ‘Self-Por­trait as a Crea­ture of Num­bers’ and her ode to the but­tocks ‘Bot­tom Power’.

Poet and lit­er­a­ture stu­dent Charles Obiri-Yeboah offered up the vul­ner­a­ble piece ‘Fig­ures’, and slalomed his way through ‘Dol­phins’.

There­sa Lola turned a ref­er­en­tial web­page into a heart­felt tale about her grandfather’s fad­ing mem­o­ry with ‘Wiki: How to Find Things You Lost’. And she sought to cut through the off-putting media per­sona of rap­per DMX with ‘Tran­script of DMX’s Ses­sion with Therapist’.

Poet and host Inua Ellams gave the audi­ence a tale of an old class­mate who mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared (‘Short Short­ed 1995’), and the “first” sequel to Eddie Murphy’s Com­ing to Amer­i­ca (‘Com­ing Back to America’).

The above pho­tos remain prop­er­ty of their respec­tive owner(s). Any repro­duc­tion or copy­ing is pro­hib­it­ed, unless pre­vi­ous­ly agreed with the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Please con­tact the pho­tog­ra­ph­er direct­ly or email us here.