Lupe Fiasco's debut London headliner was originally booked for the Scala, but transferred to the sterile Islington Academy after an unrelated shooting at the original venue. It's ironic that a Fiasco show should be affected, even tangentially, by violence - the Chicago MC isn't known as a proponent of "nerd-rap" for nothing. His hobbies - chess and shortwave radio - and his shunning of hip-hop's usual subject matter make Lupe the rapper least likely to instigate a "beef". With his wire-rimmed spectacles, slight build and habit of addressing the audience as "ladies and gentlemen", he looks like the boy destined to be picked on by the tough kids.

Who knows how he would have fared if he hadn't been taken under the wings of Jay-Z (who produced his highly likeable album, Food & Liquor) and Kanye West (who featured him on the hit Touch the Sky)? Their patronage has given him leeway to be as idiosyncratic as he likes, a strategy that has paid off handsomely both on record and onstage. The latter is where rappers traditionally reveal their crushing lack of charisma; Lupe, though, won over the crowd with a mix of vulnerability, wry humour and rapid, twisty rhyming.

A Muslim ("I broke my [Ramadan] fast for y'all!"), he admitted to being torn between loving America and hating its foreign policy, voicing his conflicting feelings on American Terrorist, a deceptively lovely song, as was Daydreamin', which couched his opinion of Abu Ghraib in a lounge-jazz tune. But the show was defined not by politics, but modesty.

"Let's give 'em some sunshine, DJ," was the introduction to solo hit Kick, Push, which, along with a euphoric Touch the Sky, rounded off a show that transcended the usual hip-hop boundaries by a long way.