Despite the venue looking like a sitcom set designer's idea of a Queens hip-hop club we are, we're assured, at a genuine "thug gig".
"We're gonna talk about cocaine, we're gonna talk about guns, we're gonna talk about fucking people up," says Freddie Gibbs, having bounced onstage in a balaclava, spouting hyperspeed rhymes about his violent, drug-dealing past in Gary, Indiana, and repeatedly demanding that we disrespect the constabulary. Stage right, a heavy-set weed roadie prepares hefty joints for Freddie to bash on during his dope-and-coke segment.
Having checked you haven't accidentally wandered in from 1996, you might assume that Gibbs is a pastiche gangsta throwback. His tales of hustling, womanising and murderous revenge on double-crossing crew traitors could be parodies of Wu-Tang Clan or early Jay Z and he's released mixtapes called The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs and, reworking the title of Outkast's debut album, midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik. He's even developed a mini-feud with Young Jeezy that's less beef, more cutlet. Squint, and he's Tupac resurrected.
Yet he carries it off, thanks to a relentlessly elegant flow, a deep-set authenticity and a devil's panache, delivering the litany of Tecs and torture that is Still Livin' with an almost sensual languor. Narcotic anthems Kush Cloud and Have U Seen Her are suitably hazy and hypnotic while tracks from his latest album Piñata come steeped in the dank psychedelic beats of long-term collaborator Madlib, all ominous chimes, hallucinated soul samples and toplines as taut as piano wire around a rival's throat. He's surprisingly personable, too, passing his joint around, taking requests and weaving intriguingly human ghetto soap operas such as recent single Deeper, about the anguish of getting out of jail to find his girlfriend pregnant by another man.
Since Jay Z declared peace with Nas and 50 Cent lost his Blur-versus-Oasis style 2007 chart race with Kanye, the gangsta has played second Uzi to the conscience rapper. Gibbs is here to prove there's fight in the old thug yet.
• At the Institute, Birmingham, 2 September (Box office: 0844 844 0444) and the Deaf Institute, Manchester 3 September (Box office: 0844 858 8521).
