We are firmly on hip-hop time tonight. It’s an hour past the advertised show time when the artist formerly known as Mos Def finally appears in this impatient sweatbox, wearing a nifty fedora and a hugely superfluous scarf, with no explanation for his lateness. Flashing a beatific smile, he scatters petals on the stage around him.
The tardiness feels appropriate as Bey – he changed his name in 2011 – has been keeping us waiting in one way or another for a very long time. When he emerged in the late 90s as half of Black Star with Talib Kweli, then with his debut solo album, Black on Both Sides, his lyrical acuity and easy flow looked like the future for conscious hip-hop. Since then he has busied himself in other areas. He has a successful acting career, which has earned him Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. He has also become an increasingly high-profile political activist, allowing the human-rights charity Reprieve to force-feed him in order to highlight the plight of hunger-striking prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. And he’s put forward 9/11 conspiracy theories during appearances on US current affairs shows that make Russell Brand on Question Time appear to possess a Churchillian gravitas.
Tonight Bey is advertised as performing Black on Both Sides in full to mark the 15th anniversary of its release. Naturally, he does no such thing. Instead, flanked by a pair of slick DJs, he eases through a spirited yet perfunctory greatest-hits set that is hampered by a fuzzy sound and sporadic technical hitches. His flow is loose and lithe on jazzy, trippy old numbers such as Mathematics and New World Water, and on Auditorium and Casa Bey from his excellent last album, 2009’s The Ecstatic, but he is firmly in his comfort zone and coasting. The atmosphere is not aided by the stream of grumbling audience members who are forced by his lateness to leave less than halfway through the set to catch the last tube home.
It’s a deeply frustrating experience, especially as priapic sex numbers Ms Fat Booty and The Panties, along with the skittering beats and sultry rhythms of Umi Says, show how good Bey can be when he is not merely phoning it in. He ends this bizarre, patchy show throwing roses into the crowd to the soundtrack of the Clash’s The Magnificent Seven. This has not been his finest hour.
• At 02 Academy, Bristol, on 27 November. Box office: 0844-477 2000.
