By the standards of British hip-hop, Blak Twang (aka Tony Olabode) is a crusty old veteran. It's hard work playing the Americans at their own game, and the where are they now file bulges with the likes of Ruthless Rap Assassins and London Posse. Olabode, however, has been plugging away since the mid-1990s: a cornerstone of UK rap, if never the breakthrough star he promised to be.

When he slips into the chorus from Dizzee Rascal's Fix Up Look Sharp, he underscores the fact that the first generation of British MCs to crack the mainstream - Dizzee, MC Dynamite and The Streets - emerged from the garage scene, not the hip-hop one.

Tonight, though, the competition is irrelevant. Olabode is on home turf, playing to people sufficiently devoted that they chant the chorus of So Rotton (sic) without prompting. Joined by rapper K9 and DJ Big Ted (sadly there is no sign of Little Ted), he is a charismatic MC, forceful enough to overcome a sound system that renders most of his lyrics unintelligible.

Those that do emerge - lines about Shredded Wheat, Jeffrey Archer and Wurzel Gummidge - are the kind of cutely parochial reference points in which British rappers delight. He follows the furious Sum Ah Dem with an impassioned tirade against "Kim Howells, the culture minister who knows fuck all about culture," only slightly undermined by the fact that Howells hasn't occupied that post since last June.

Olabode sounds least convincing when he's rooted in the beats and rhymes of America. The best tracks, including the dancehall-powered Trixstar, are those that could only have emerged from London. It works, too, when he demands we bellow "oi" instead of "yo", tweaking rap's standard call-and-response schtick into a terrace chant.

His wittiest song is also, in its mustn't-grumble modesty, the most uniquely British. A stoic reflection on his career so far ("I ain't had no big record deal"), it is called Ain't Done 2 Bad. And he really ain't.