The surprising thing about the Fugees was not that three such ambitious characters coexisted long enough to make rap's biggest-selling album, but that they inspired so few imitators. It's been two years since they disappeared from radar screens, but only now has a group appeared that unarguably owes a debt to Lauryn Hill and company.
Spooks take up where they left off in both configuration (charismatic female crooner flanked by boisterous male MCs) and musical signature. Their positivist hip-pop has yielded one of this year's lushest singles, Things I've Seen, which poses one of those existential questions ("Emotion or reason, now which one do you obey?") that pre-Fugee rap didn't trouble its head with.
From the welcome they receive for their first UK headliner, the hip-hop public has missed this sort of gentle "edutainment". The five east-coasters, who refuse to divulge their exact origins, employ a little auto-suggestion by performing in front of a banner that reads "Spooks: hijacking the planet". It seems to spur on their well-oiled show, in which MCs Bookaso, Vengeance, Water Water and Hypno roar through most of their debut album, SIOSOS (Spooks Is on Some Other Script), like so many genial juggernauts, while vocalist Ming-Xia bends notes like a rap Ella Fitzgerald.
Each tune is preceded by a little homily. The whirling Karma Hotel comes with a warning from Bookaso about staying upright: "If you stab people in the back, it'll come back and squash you like a bug." Sucker MCs also get short shrift. "We know you're looking for something fresh and original," the four rappers taunt on Something Fresh, a big ensemble piece driven by a squawking saxophone. Most of the music is played live, with almost no recourse to samples, which is almost unheard of.
Ming-Xia, who flouts rap convention by being cuddly rather than glamorous, personifies their genre-hopping style by issuing chirps that build into full-blown jazz odysseys. Singing in Spanish on the salsa-fied Swindley's Maracas, she's quite something. If Spooks miss a trick, it's by not giving her enough to do.
Professor Griff, Public Enemy's long-departed Minister of Information, arrives to kick off Things I've Seen. Small and stooped, he could be the ghost of hip-hop past. As he high-fives the company, there's a sense of the torch being passed to the next generation.
