It's somewhere around the 40-minute mark, as Robbie Williams's face suddenly looms on the video screen, that it becomes clear – for someone who was once just the Boy in Da Corner, Dizzee Rascal is amazingly well-connected. He's at the iTunes festival because he's promoting a new album, The Fifth, but this isn't so much a gig as an invitation to play Six Degrees of Separation.
Earlier, Jessie J dropped by to exercise her lungs on We Don't Play Around; a bit later, Florence Welch's sampled voice recreated her part on You Got the Dirtee Love. Now here's Robbie, or at least a photo of him, keeping Dizzee company on their joint hit, Goin' Crazy. And he even has friends in the reality TV sector: his onstage sideman Daniel Pearce was a member of One True Voice, the boyband created on Popstars: the Rivals.
However, all of this has come at a price. Once devoted to exploring grime's bleak futurism, Dizzee now exists at the nexus of celeb culture, geezer-rap and the Radio 1 Chart Show. The iTunes crowd is overwhelmingly teenage, and some look far too young to be shouting the words to Bonkers – "All I care about is sex and violence/ A heavy bassline is my kind of silence" – much less the explicit sentiments of Arse Like That. But who can blame them? Dizzee's cheery-badman appeal is undeniable, and he has the hits to back it up.
They keep coming throughout this fat-free show: Dance Wiv Me, Bassline Junkie, Holiday. Dizzee is as jaw-dropping an MC as ever, spitting his elaborate rhymes with dizzying agility. With the sweet-voiced Pearce aboard, there's more singing than there once was, but it doesn't undercut Dizzee's swagger. Yet he's also mature enough now to have perspective: "It's all about the love, trust me!" he bawls. "There ain't enough love in the world."
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