A very messy Missy

A feeling of foreboding hung over the night from the start. Several minutes after the 22 million-selling Virginia rapper was due to appear, hundreds were still stuck outside, suffering from a combination of an inefficient box office and an admirably thorough security team.

Elliott was preceded by a cheesy, oiled-up, American R&B crooner who was met with apathy, later giving way to open ridicule. If I were to offer him a word of advice, it would be that in England, inviting "all the promiscuous girls in the house" to "make some noise" will seldom produce an enthusiastic response.

There were a few brief minutes of optimism when Missy Elliott arrived, an hour and a half overdue. Her winning grin and physical energy, which would have been unthinkable during her plump younger years, was dazzling and infectious as she launched into a medley of hits, backed up by heavy, bouncing hiphop beats and scratches from the DJ.

She was surrounded by acrobatic dancers who performed many nifty costume changes, sporting umbrellas and plastic macs for The Rain and ghost outfits for Get Ur Freak On.

But although they seemed a strange addition to a rap show, the dancers were not the problem. At a generous guess, Missy Elliott spent about half of her hour-long show actually rapping. Whether it was distributing footwear or talking at length about nothing in particular, Elliott seemed eager to do anything except actually perform a song, reducing many of her hits to half-hearted medleys.

She did at least deliver in full a great rendition of her superb 2004 hit, Work It, although this only emphasised how bizarre and frustrating it was that she was unwilling to give her other songs the same treatment.

Flashes of vocal greatness occurred occasionally, but disappeared just as suddenly when tracks were inexplicably cut short. Breathless and often inaudible, Elliott's rap technique generally created what sounded like poor karaoke versions of her tongue-twistingly brilliant hits, not helped by a continually distorted soundsystem.

Why did people applaud (if rather weakly) at the end? Perhaps they were not yet ready to admit the awful truth: they had just paid £35 for a show that came up short on every single level.

Missy Elliott
Hammersmith Palais
Shepherds Bush Road, Hammersmith, W6 7NL