When Lupe Fiasco released The Cool album earlier this year, it saw him engaging more than ever with the traditional issues of hip-hop: guns, drugs, crime and girls. His take on it all though, is one of detached bemusement and articulate sympathy rather than gangster bravado or arguably even worse, self-righteous condemnation. It is a record befitting the most articulate man in hip-hop.

Tonight he alternates, almost song by song, between that record and 2006’s Food and Liquor, including a blistering rendition of his most successful single to date, ‘I Gotcha’. A smile never leaves his face as his band lovingly support him in a set unembellished by dancers, props, or expletive-strewn diatribes about any violent past.

When he does look back at ‘where arr currm frorrrm’ it is not with the unattractive menace of the more self-aggrandising figures in the hip-hop, but through a lens of genuine thankfulness and a subtlety suggesting a complex and heartfelt relationship with how far he has come. Not a single piece of jewellery adorns Lupe tonight, as any decoration at all would be overwhelmed by the extraordinary energy of this classy, talented bastard. He seems like a child as he launches himself from one side of the stage to the other, yet maintains a devastating physical grace. As well as ‘I Gotcha’, the ground shook particularly hard to ‘Push, Kick’, ‘Hip-hop Saved My Life’ and ‘Superstar’ – something Lupe is, thankfully, not.

Indeed, all the false compliments that are lavished on Kanye West – for his production, insight and sampling – are genuinely true of Lupe, and with this show proving his live worth, he is becoming something of a phenomenon.

Barnaby Smith