He may currently be one half of what may currently be the biggest band in the world but in recent months, Antwan "Big Boi" Patton has been somewhat overshadowed by his partner Andre "3000" Benjamin. Benjamin is the outlandish dresser, and the author of the omnipresent psychedelic rock single Hey Ya! Patton, meanwhile, is viewed as the keeper of Outkast's hip-hop roots. Accordingly, his solo live show - Benjamin has declined to tour - eschews the duo's usual live band approach and adopts the standard hip-hop format of rapper-plus-DJ. This does not augur well: live hip-hop usually resembles an experiment to see what an audience will put up with before calling the Citizen's Advice Bureau and wailing they have been ripped off.
The show certainly begins in time-honoured hip-hop style. Patton is late on stage and the crowd is left with a DJ repeatedly asking if they're ready to see Big Boi and demanding they make some noise: the rap equivalent of those glum improvised monologues Wimbledon commentators have to come up with when rain stops play. When he finally arrives, however, fears are quickly allayed. Unlike most hip-hop gigs, Patton's show seems to be structured. He opens by tearing through Outkast's hits So Fresh So Clean and Ms Jackson, accompanied not by the usual glowering retinue of underemployed heavies, but a troupe of dancers in matching military fatigues. The dancers are perhaps more diverting than they intend to be; unwittingly camp, they could be the chorus line in a Baz Luhrmann musical.
In another daring break with live rap tradition, the "special guest" is not a previously unheard-of member of the rapper's posse but someone you actually might want to see: underrated white rapper Bubba Sparxxx. In fact, the entire show seems less like a restatement of hip-hop roots, than a demonstration that Andre 3000 is not the only member of Outkast concerned with pushing the genre's boundaries. As Ghetto Musick rattles thrillingly from the stage, somewhere between 1970s funk and a particularly deranged early 1990s techno track, you have to concede the point.
