Gig review: Arrested development

"THERE'S 20 years of hip-hop music on this stage right here tonight," declared rapper and lead singer Speech towards the end of this show.

He might have been glossing over the five years at the end of the 1990s during which Arrested Development had split and their less than seismic contribution to popular music over the past decade, but the stage show the group put on was somehow reassuringly of another time.

Unlike the basic "two MCs and one DJ" set-up of much contemporary hip-hop, the presence of a three-piece live band alongside Speech (real name Todd Thomas: he adopted the Outkast look of jeans, black waistcoat and preppy glasses), DJ and occasional MC One Love and backing singers and dancers Montsho Eshe and Tasha Larae helped flesh the band's sound out into the realms of energetic funk and heated summertime African styles. The crowd was a little thin, consisting mostly of those who recall the group's heyday and younger fans of world dance music, but those on stage very creditably kept everyone moving and the atmosphere bubbling over.

Tracks from their latest album Strong – from their entire last decade's output, in fact – were greeted with warmth, but the three big hits, Tennessee, People Everyday and Mr Wendall, provided all the music the crowd were really after, and in instrumentally elongated versions too.

That last track was dedicated by Speech to the band's elder member, Baba Oje, currently hospitalised at the age of 78. Such longevity, you feel, wouldn't be beyond this still young and lively outfit.