“Are there any real Joy Bada$$ fans in the house?” asks the Brooklyn teenager – Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott to passport officials – as around half the pairs of hands in the venue pump the air. “I said, ‘Are there any real Joey Bada$$ fans in the house?’” he asks again, and this time every hand raises skyward, and a chant erupts of “Joey! Joey!”

Dripping with charisma, the rake-thin, 19-year-old rapper is clearly on a roll. In the last three years, he’s risen to selling out sizeable venues on the back of his acclaimed mixtapes. The likes of 1999, released in 2012, and last year’s Summer Knights combine his distinctive, throaty flow with old-school beats from hip-hop luminaries including MF Doom and DJ Premier. If the suicide of teenage collaborator Capital STEEZ gave Bada$$ a major jolt, it’s given his delivery a melancholy edge.

However, this show is anything but downbeat, as he brings youthful energy to vintage-styled hip-hop. He uses his right arm to conduct the crowd and, when Kirk Knight joins on the mic, criss-crosses the stage like vintage Run DMC. The voice-and-turntable format similarly hark back to hip-hop’s golden age, but it’s a long time since anyone has made it feel this vibrant.

Tracks from the mixtapes segue into selections from his debut album, which will be released in January on his 20th birthday. Sweet Dreams emits a warm nostalgic glow, the crowd already know the words to Big Dusty and the haunting, piano-led Like Water remembers Capital STEEZ.

There’s a powerful moment when Bada$$ asks the crowd to remember his dead friend, and the cheering room suddenly falls to an eerie silence. Then the big-voiced rapper quietly whispers: “Thank you.”

• At Motion, Bristol, tonight. Box office: 01179 723 111, and at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, on Tuesday (0844-477 2000). Then touring.