If you can judge such things by the extremes of age a popstar attracts, Tinie Tempah seems as close to ubiquity as it's possible to get. The night before this show in Brighton, viewers of ITV's TV Burp were treated to the sight of a crowd of pensioners singing his breakthrough hit Pass Out. On the other hand, if the audience at this gig were any younger, they'd have arrived by pushchair.
The crowd's reaction when the rapper arrives – hood up, whooping – is so frenzied, you get the feeling that if he just stood there for the next hour with his hood up, whooping, they'd go home happy. As it is, they get a full-on pop show, complete with covers of recent hits (Far East Movement's Like a G6; Taio Cruz's Dynamite), a guest spot from support act Katy B and a lot of who-can-scream-the-loudest audience participation.
An impressively kinetic presence while rapping, his persona veers from hokey to charming. He talks so much about his Brits win that you almost wish he'd gone home empty-handed; he even gets a volunteer to come up and wave his awards around. But he also encourages fans to take snaps of him posing, complete with ridiculous grin, and convinces the entire audience to crouch on the floor then jump in the air: the bedlam that ensues is pretty infectious.
It is not the only moment the show carries you along. Though the hip-hop affectations – including CCTV footage of riots during Simply Unstoppable – ring a little hollow, and the sound is as cluttered as you'd expect from a full band attempting to recreate a sample-driven album, when the show sparks, it is undeniable. Miami to Ibiza is a thrilling torrent of drums and rave synthesisers, and Pass Out still sounds like the best pop single of the last 12 months. The latter causes such pandemonium that it makes the noise that greeted his arrival sound as subdued as the parents waiting outside the venue.
