It was hard to find the words after Mr Rap God himself splayed them all across the walls of The Aberdeen Hotel, during Perth's Fringe World.
Apparently we can't award six stars, which is a shame because words just can't do this man justice. Ironic because that's actually how he deals – words are his weapons.
He fields suggestions from the punters for the topics of his freestyles, like a mushroom-picking trip along the rainforest floor where regular humans fear to tread.
"Don't worry, it won’t be anywhere near as bad as you’re expecting a privately educated white boy to be."
Nary nineteen truer words spoken.
Someone asked him to include the word 'stanchion', which he may have initially declined, seeking more riveting content for his off-the-bat word-spurt-hurt, seeking something more in the vernacular vein of the best suggestion he's received yet – 'a day in the life of an Aztec Priest' (it's online). . . But the 'upright mast vs vertical pole' was shoved right in to impale the impossibly tight performance anyway.
We were watching a fairytale unravel, as crazy as you could imagine Rapunzel with an afro to be (another audience suggestion, never to be rapped again), waxing lyrical about the ethics of infant male circumcision. . .
Chris Turner even does a particular rap without misogyny (well actually, all of them are): "At no point will I refer to women as objects, but the whole way through I will refer to objects as women."
It's exquisite. It's existential. It's enigmatically legible. It's a feast for intelligent minds and plenty of it is still accessible to the rest of you. In fact, your mind can only expand by witnessing this British-accented brilliance.
After a particularly glorious exposé aka challenge victory, the golden mic comes out – and as the show goes on, it's crystalline that whatever else is in his fanny pack is going to be amazing.
Bedazzled by this much porcelain-skinned brilliance, don't let the golden glow go to your head, like some kind of saffron obsession.
He's just a regular star. Every flow ephemeral, eternal, demi-ecclesiastical. Is it wrong that this guy might make you feel like you can rap, too?
Confused? Just catch him, if you can.
Chris Turner returns to Australia next year, if we're lucky enough to be graced by this deliberate demagogue of a bebop deity.
★★★★★
