What a Scorcha! Sean Paul threatens to blow the roof off Brixton Academy

If Beenie Man is popularly known as the king of dancehall then the much-loved Sean Paul is undoubtedly its global ambassador. The 49-year-old Jamaican has the pop crossover success, collaborative nous and longevity – two decades and counting – to bolster that claim.

Paul is increasingly better known for guest appearances on tracks by artists as diverse as Pharrell Williams, Sia, Dua Lipa and Nicki Minaj but that only seems to refresh his appeal, introducing him to a new generation of fans. More recently, his collaborations with reggaeton and Afrobeats stars such as Enrique Iglesias and Fuse ODG have widened that fan base further. It’s safe to say that Justin Bieber’s Sorry and Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You would not have been such worldwide hits if they hadn’t been underpinned by the dancehall rhythms that Sean Paul took from Kingston clubs to the mainstream.

As Paul’s kinetic performance at the only London date on his Scorcha UK tour showed, he is perfectly capable of delivering the party-starting goods solo, without help from his high-profile collaborators. And indeed, on the night before the start of Notting Hill Carnival, "party" is the watchword at this show as the DJ primes the crowd for two hours before Paul himself bounds on stage in front of the elevated DJ’s turntable, flanked by live musicians and two brilliant female dancers skanking, gully creeping and twerking for all their worth.

Within a couple of minutes he was exhorting “sexy, beautiful ladies” to shimmy to his mega-hit, Shake That Thing. Paul clearly knows his fanbase. A cursory scan of the jam-packed 5,000-capacity venue suggested that it is about 90% female.

If some of the lesser-known songs seemed a bit middle-of-the-road and indistinguishable from each other, particularly those from new album, Scorcha, Paul managed to keep the crowd on side with energetic renditions of hits such as Get Busy, Gimme the Light and Give It Up to Me, performed in a "freestyle" medley, and his own arrangement of Boasty, on which he collaborated with Wiley, Stefflon Don and Idris Elba.

It’s just a pity that his renditions of these infections songs felt more like teasers than full-blown versions. The only hits that escaped this truncated treatment was the sublime lover’s rock of I’m Still in Love and the show's closing party anthems Like Glue, Let the Trumpets Blow and Temperature.

This finale threatened to blow the roof off Brixton Academy, such was the incandescent joy of the crowd. By that time, I was happy to forgive Paul for the evening’s shortcomings. After all, there was an overwhelming wealth of material to squeeze into 90 minutes and the man knows how to put on a show. Scorcha indeed!