Wiki @ Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, 27 Jul

It feels like a good time to see Wiki. He has a decade in the bank that has quietly set him as one of the lodestars of the current generation of left-field rap, and a setlist largely plucked from last year's impeccable Half God, the record that has pushed him to another level. He basks in this new adulation, but rises to the challenge these new expectations present. He’s on great form. 

On record there’s a very specific thing that feels like the Wiki sound. That flow that’s totally his own; tumbling, loose but kind of jagged, atop some gorgeous samples and rolling drums. It’s the kind of sound that you can imagine getting lost in a live setting. But it really works. The way his flow artfully staggers through Remarkably is a joy to behold, the repetitions of the hook wrapping the crowd around his finger.

It’s the breadth of tone he manages that feels particularly surprising. A pair of incendiary unreleased tracks show him at his punchiest, but he’s just as adept when things needs to be more delicate. The sumptuous All I Need, in which Earl Sweatshirt manages to absolutely murder a room without even being present, plays perfectly on the pair’s ability to marry swagger and vulnerability. As Wiki’s verse glides from the latter to the former it feels genuinely anthemic. As does the bombastic Mayor, a victory lap fanfare with the biggest, strongest chorus he’s ever written. He’s clearly relishing in it, perched atop the monitor, beaming, and it is infectious. 

It helps when you’re blessed with one of hip-hop’s great voices; the kind of voice that renders everything utterly captivating. You want to hear Wiki narrate animal documentaries or do a Halfords stocktake. Even his between-song chat, which there’s a good deal of, has this feeling of necessity, like it’s as much part of the songs as the lyrics. It means when the spiralling narrative of Drug Supplier lets him lock in, burrowing into the gorgeous string sample, that voice twisting and churning amongst it, the atmosphere tightens and tightens around his words until it’s almost a release when its truncated form means it has to ebb away too soon. 

With the room at full sweatbox, he closes the set with a feral Wik Da God and he’s incandescent. Barking, shirtlessly wrenching round the stage, it’s astonishingly good. As videos of Rolling Loud festival stream out and you see half-arsed performers shrug over playback through their sets, it’s a joy to see someone leave everything on the stage, to be totally committed to the moment. Wiki is at the top of his game right now, and if the new songs are anything to go by, he’s only getting better.