It is almost impossible to talk about live hip-hop without sounding like a professional curmudgeon. With the notable exception of Dizzee Rascal's blistering performance at this year's All Tomorrow's Parties festival, charisma and invention rarely survive the journey from CD to concert hall.
Tonight is doubly discouraging because Roots Manuva renders irrelevant another recurring hip-hop debate: whether the UK's take on the genre has any validity or is simply the poor relation to its big American brother. His records flourish without any anxiety about US influence, as the fantastically tongue-in-cheek (and entirely English) line in Witness about eating cheese on toast while pondering the third world proves.
What is hip-hop without clarity, syncopation and flow? Many rappers who present themselves as uncomplicatedly macho types deliver their lines in a bluff, mildly glottal monotone. And because live performances of this unspontaneous, sample-based music bring the beat and the bass to the fore, it's difficult to enunciate with any subtlety and be heard. The result is often ragged shouting smeared across the music with - as tonight - scant regard for considerations such as keeping time.
It's also written in law that however articulate or pensive the rapper, at some point someone on stage will bellow: "All the people on the left make some noise!" Repeatedly.
Occasionally, there are glimmers: the strangulated, military funk of Dub Styles and the alien gurgle of Witness, which provides a riotous climax. But the star himself seems oddly dim, shuffling around the stage, looking at his feet as if uncomfortably aware this was a battle lost before the first shots were fired.
