Name: Percee P

Location: Habana Annex Backyard, Austin

Date: March 12 2008

Time: 11pm

Appearance: The veteran rapper is decked out in standard baggy jumper and jeans plus what might be known as a doo rag. The crowd are not dissimilarly attired.

In summary: While, down the road, another venue hosts a night of local gangster rap (including the living half of legendary duo UGK), this is the alternative, a night of independent - AKA "backpacker" - hip-hop. It's difficult to know what "independent" means, though, other than to say that most of the acts in the lineup aren't very successful any more. Percee P kind of bucks the trend, in that he was never that big in the first place and is probably receiving more exposure now than he ever did, but he still sounds tired and unoriginal, as if the clocks had stopped in 1994.

Highlight: A decent freestyle rap in the middle of the set (although "a capella" might seem a more applicable term as Percee didn't seem to be coming up with anything of the top of his head, kind of what you're supposed to do when you freestyle) which showed that the rapper, whose reputation stems from his fabulously diss-filled collaborations with Lord Finesse back in the 80s, can actually rhyme.

Lowlights: Pretty much everything bar the freestyle (and one brief call-and-response when he implored the crowd: "When I say Percee, you say P"). Most of the lines were delivered too fast and too furiously to make anything out from them, while the beats were as dull as dishwater and older than most of the audience.

Mood: Quiet. Only about two people seemed to know any of Percy's stuff and it's hard to imagine that anyone in the crowd thought they were hearing anything at the cutting edge of the genre. "Independent" hip-hop is hardly at its healthiest if this night was anything to go by.

Marks out of 10: 4

Review in a sentence: Percee should hang up his doo rag until he has a fresh idea.