Livestream-hopping is just as irritating as being at a real festival

The ghost of Samuel Beckett oversaw the Hip Hop Loves NY livestream last Thursday night. Time and time again its host, the veteran hip-hop TV presenter Ralph McDaniels — known to all his guests, unnervingly, as ‘Uncle Ralph’ — tried to connect to some Golden Age legend. Time and time again, his attempts at a straightforward interview went wrong.

We saw Uncle Ralph, on one half of the screen, ask a question about Covid-19, nod along to the answer, then say, ‘Thank you, doctor.’ But we didn’t have a doctor on screen, or on our audio. We had Ice T. ‘I ain’t no doctor,’ Ice-T said. Cut to Nas. But Nas was inaudible, and his picture was breaking up. ‘I see Chuck D!’ He did, but we didn’t. ‘There’s Chuck D!’ No there isn’t. ‘There’s a problem. We’re gonna get back to Chuck and Nas.’ Uncle Ralph got Chuck D back, but he was taking another call by then. And he couldn’t hear Uncle Ralph anyway. Ralph got Nas back and they started talking about decluttering. It was like Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough as Cissy and Ada. All they needed to do was hitch their bosoms.

Uncle Ralph kept trying to talk to Biz Markie but getting a hip-hop DJ called Stretch Armstrong instead. Uncle Ralph kept reassuring us he would get Biz Markie on the line. And still we had Stretch Armstrong, looking more and more disconsolate as he realised Uncle Ralph wasn’t the least bit interested in him. ‘We’re having some difficulty getting some of our phone guests on,’ Uncle Ralph admitted.

Hip Hop Loves NY was meant to be the glorious climax to an evening of trying to recreate a festival from my sofa, hopping from livestream to livestream and seeing what might pop up.