There aren't many ways to escape from Nova Scotia, but Buck 65 (or Richard Terfry as he was then) managed to find two of them. His original plans for a baseball career with the New York Yankees were scuppered by a knee injury. Back at the drawing board, Terfry immersed himself in his favourite music -hip-hop - and created his own idiosyncratic version of a form more frequently associated with gangs, guns and collapsing inner cities.

Buck's music is more the work of a conscientious miniaturist or short-story writer than of a loudmouthed sensationalist, and instead of staccato Uzi-type rhythms his lyrics have a fluidity and suppleness that float around the beat and carry his narratives with dazzling clarity. Some of this stuff is verging on literature. Craftsmanship, for instance, is the tale of an old shoe-shine man who realises he's becoming a relic of the past, and Buck makes his point about a changing fast-food world with no quality control by laying out in fine detail the way a shoe really should be shined.

This is the first time Buck has been out with a band instead of his usual one-man DIY electronica setup. He calls his combo the Savant Garde, and as he leads them from the microphone, Buck shuffles his roles of MC, stand-up comic and polysyllabic raconteur like a card-sharp. "How's the show goin'?" he queries. "I can't see, there's lights in my eyes."

Fishin', borrowed from Woody Guthrie, blows up into an absurdist epic (Buck catches himself a fish, then "I saddled him up and I rode into town"). He introduces Tired Out by asking "Are y'all ready for some honky-tonk?", as if we're in for some cowpunk rock'n'roll, but the song is an agonising saga of infidelity and self-loathing, carried along by mournful steel guitar. But hey! Laughter is the best medicine, so he tells us a joke. "A horse, a nun and a dwarf walk into a bar, and the bartender says, 'Is this some kind of joke?'"

·Buck 65 play T in the Park, Glasgow, tomorrow.