It takes an hour for the showbiz side of Akon to surface, but he certainly makes up for lost time. When the singer, songwriter, producer, label owner and former felon breaks off from his string of electronically propelled R&B hits to tell a convoluted story, he appears to be gearing up for a moment of revelation. Perhaps he'll explain how he turned his protegee, Lady GaGa, from a jobbing songwriter to a chart-topper, or how he plans to work a similar trick with Sway, the British rapper he's signed to his label and who was on stage with him only minutes earlier. Instead, the spiel turns out to be the elaborate setup for a joke, the punchline of which involves Akon peeling off his T-shirt while his band play the chorus of I'm In Love With a Stripper, a song by another of his affiliates, T-Pain.

Akon shouldn't need all the messing about. Stripped of much of his signature studio trickery, his clear, distinctive voice has a soulful warmth not always apparent on record, allowing his frequently excellent songs to become the focus. An episodic arrangement of Ghetto stresses its poetry ("These streets remind me of quicksand"), but it is a rare moment of attentiveness in a set where the songs are truncated after the first chorus, and momentum fails to build.

His decision to stagedive during Right Now (Na Na Na) worries Akon's staff enough to bring a man the size of a small car to the centre of the stage. The suited bodyguard irritatedly cuffs away anyone who comes too close, including the band's kilted, shirtless DJ who has deserted his decks to empty a small bottle of water over the heads of the audience. Amusing, entertaining but shambolic, it's an apt finale.