"When I said hip-hop was dead, people got confused," Nasir Jones smiles. The 33-year-old New Yorker's eighth LP, Hip-Hop Is Dead, has provoked precisely the kind of controversy he intended, and he is enjoying milking the moment.

Nas has always foxed those who like their music neatly pre-packaged - his art reflects life in all its random, contrary messiness, and his music demands careful listening. His voice, full of warmth and subtle inflection, rarely rises above conversational volume, and his complex flow seems destined to get lost in bigger venues. Yet his performance is compelling.

Most other rap stars troop on stage with armies of affiliates and gawkers, and clutter their gigs with hackneyed audience-response routines. Nas just turns up with his DJ and raps. Dressed in white and followed by a pair of spotlights, he rarely strays from the centre of the stage, creating a point of intense focus. Necks crane to get an unobstructed view as he draws his word pictures, depicting New York State of Mind's gunman fleeing up the apartment-building staircase when his weapon jams. Nas Is Like's stream-of-consciousness ("Freedom or jail - clips inserted/ A baby's being born the same time my man is murdered/ The beginning and end") is followed by Made You Look's pugilistic verses, appended to breakbeats so ancient that he could almost be conjuring a lost culture.

As he bobs and weaves, acting out Get Down's conversation and dice game, he exudes the aura of a soloist in the most intimate of jazz clubs: a stylish dude pouring his soul into the next few bars, then digging deep to do it all again. With a performer of such furious intensity in its corner, hip-hop's health is not in doubt.