Considering east coast rapper DMX could face up to seven years imprisonment next week, after he allegedly crashed a black 1998 Ford Expedition into security gates at JFK airport while in possession of controlled substances and a lethal weapon, he could be forgiven if punctuality was no longer his top priority.

Even so, by the time the man known to the courts as Earl Simmons took to the stage - two hours late - several fights had broken out in the stalls and the woeful warmup DJ had left the stage in despair. It is to DMX's credit that within minutes he had scooped the majority of the restless crowd into the palm of his hand - not a pleasant place to be with a man who appears so prone to touching his crotch.

It's an area from which much of DMX's music emanates. The heavy synth basslines of Where the Hood At swung with an even lower centre of gravity than the waistline of his trousers, and he panted his way through Who We Be in a disturbing fashion.

His trademark raspy vocal delivery is akin to listening to a pitbull terrier with tonsillitis and, as if to accentuate this, he spontaneously barked in the middle of several songs, as though afflicted with some irritating form of canine Tourette's.

An a cappella medley from his most recent album Grand Champ revealed a taut command of rhythm and texture. And yet, you feel that while DMX likes the sound of his own voice, he hasn't very much of worth to say with it.

He possesses neither the intelligent wordplay of Talib Kweli nor Busta Rhymes' playful sense of humour. Instead, his lyrics are a litany of misogynistic and violent nonsense, bristling with an angry intensity but lacking in direction. The result was a lot of macho huffing and puffing but a complete failure to blow the house down.

· At Ambassador, Dublin, tonight and tomorrow. Box office: 00 353 1 456 9569.