Busta Rhymes has been wearing a sandwich board declaring "The end is nigh" for several albums now. When Disaster Strikes, Extinction Level Event, Anarchy and, most recently, It Ain't Safe No More are the gravel-voiced New Yorker's way of telling us to stock up on tinned food, load a shotgun and stack the furniture against the windows.

Like all doom-sayers, he has always been short on crisis solutions. So far, only 2002's jaunty single Pass the Courvoisier might be considered a plausible civil defence strategy for the apocalypse.

But, live, something changes. Perhaps driving through Wembley, essentially the end of the world with its own tube station, Rhymes reasons the worst is over. There's nothing else to fear. Time to party. "You think you're too cool to dance? We got something for yo' stinkin' ass!" he warns.

And he has. In seven years since going solo from Leaders of the New School, Rhymes has amassed quite a resume of rump-shaking hits. The breakthrough Woo Hah! (Got You All in Check) threatens to tear the roof off. Therefore Tear the Roof Off doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre.

OK, Mariah Carey doesn't show to pour sauce on I Know What You Want, but 2,000 women taking up the invite to "shake their jelly" and back Rhymes up is more than compensation. Not many rappers would chance their reputations in a hangar like this. It's only half-full, but still Rhymes has the high-wattage charisma to make it work. His guttural, ragga-tinged delivery on Make It Clap brings instant capitulation, while some of the between-song badinage with sideman Spliff Star is worthy of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's louche Derek & Clive. So what happened to those millennial jitters? The huge backdrop shows our hero's muscular back being prodded by the muzzles of several guns. The new album still wreaks of post-9/11 terrors. Rhymes has found solace in Jamaican agriculture. "I got me a bag of weed UK," he announces. "So I'm feelin' nice!"