"Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years," LL Cool J famously rapped on the opening line of his 1991 single Mama Said Knock You Out. Back then, this hip-hop pioneer was responding to suggestions that, in the 18 months since his previous record, he might have "fallen off" - hip-hop parlance for losing pace with the quickly evolving genre. Yet here he is, a scarcely credible 19 years since his last major London gig, performing the song without a hint of irony. There is no time for that - LL is still hard at work proving that if anyone has fallen off, it is his detractors.

When he first made his name in the mid-1980s, James Todd Smith was a fresh-faced teenager who mixed hilariously exaggerated bombast with puppy-eyed vulnerability. Hip-hop strode though its formative years peopled by dozens of LL pastiches, rappers who mixed self-aggrandising braggadocio with sex appeal.

These days, despite the occasional hit, LL's record deal seems like a sinecure, and it is no surprise that he is at his best when that teenager with a point to prove fights his way to the surface. He performs the 1987 single I'm Bad ("Even when I'm braggin' I'm bein' sincere") in front of screens showing the original video. Today's been-there, done-that professional contrasts - though by no means jarringly - with the feral man-child who wanted it all so badly. He also finds space amid the more recent lovers' rap shlock for I Can't Live Without My Radio and a reading of Rock the Bells, tracks recorded in 1985 yet which, because of rap's current preference for the stripped-down styles of the electro era, sound grippingly contemporary.

He takes no risks and never gets near to testing his limits but, even in cruise control, his delight in his craft remains infectious.