Craig David doesn’t step onto the stage—he glides. Somewhere between a DJ, an R&B messiah, and a bloke who has cracked the formula for eternal youth, he appears under neon blues, arms spread like he’s about to welcome us to his personal time machine. The O2 Arena is a bottle of shaken champagne, fizzing with nostalgia and anticipation, everyone here primed to yell BO SELECTA at least once like it’s a national duty. And then—
The bassline drops. And so do shoulders, hands, inhibitions. “Re-Rewind” is the matchstick to gasoline, and suddenly, it’s 1999 again, except with better sound systems and slightly worse knees. The two-step shuffle starts rippling through the crowd. It’s impossible to overstate the bodily memory of UK garage—these beats aren’t just heard, they inhabit people, working through muscle memory, shifting hips like they were programmed for it. The drop hits, the crowd shouts, and David, ever the orchestrator, just smiles and lets the chaos unfold.
He’s older now, sure, but the voice? Untouched. Pure silk, poured over beats that still slap. “Fill Me In” slides in like a slow sip of something expensive, the crispness of those lyrics still cutting through. The crowd knows every word—some of them lived those lyrics, some of them just wished they had. David lets them carry it for a moment, steps back, listens. A veteran move. Knows exactly when to push and when to let the room breathe.
A TS5 interlude. The man pivots—because of course, he’s not just a singer, he’s a DJ, a curator, a hype man for his own legacy. One hand on the decks, the other in the air, looping in a grimey bass flip of “Got It Good.” The sound shifts—now it’s 2016, now it’s David in his reinvention era, now it’s an O2 crowd nodding like they suddenly found themselves at 3 a.m. in a dimly lit club where everything just hits right. There’s something seamless about how he moves through time—songs aren’t played, they happen, appearing out of the ether like old friends who never stopped dropping by.
“When the Bassline Drops” arrives like a prophecy fulfilled. A song that acknowledges what got him here while proving he never left. The crowd jumps, the bass punches, the O2’s floor trembles. Someone loses their mind next to me, shouting something incoherent about how Craig David invented time travel. It doesn’t seem entirely wrong.
Then, the tempo eases. The room exhales. “7 Days” is the kind of song that should feel overplayed after two decades, but somehow, it’s still untouchable. The same breezy charm, the same boyish smirk in the delivery—except now, David lets the crowd sing it back, one massive karaoke session, thousands of people suspending their disbelief that any of them have ever been cool enough to live the plot of this song. The hook loops, lingers. The moment stretches. No one wants it to end.
But of course, it does. One final run of the chorus, one last wave, and he’s gone. Just like that. No bloated encore, no dragged-out goodbyes—just a man who knows exactly when to step back and let the memory take over.
The lights come up. The illusion dissolves. Phones light up with “What a show man” and “Craig f***ing David” texts to mates who weren’t here. The O2 filters out, humming, still moving, like everyone’s got a beat lodged somewhere deep inside them that’s not quite ready to fade out. Craig David? Still born to do it.
Words & photos – Richard Isaac
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