Rodney Smith had an inkling of the reception that awaited him on the bursting Liquid Room dancefloor when he took to the stage, cheerfully intoning, “I’m home, Edinburgh”. To rapturous whooping, Roots Manuva and his collective, led by Smith, appropriately open with ‘Again and Again’, the stand out track from his excellent new album, Slime and Reason.

A long-standing totem for UK hip-hop’s intelligentsia, Manuva’s dub-laden set was rich with gems plucked from across his five albums. His biggest selling record to date, ‘Witness (1 Hope)’, sent the expectant Edinburgh crowd into a frenzy, and was shortly followed by the performance of the night, a rendition of ‘Dreamy Days’ from his breakthrough LP, Run Come Save Me, which showcased the rapper’s signature lazy Jamaican-British flow.

Just as irresistible as the full, resonant bass that underpinned each song was the South Londoner’s effortless charm offensive. In between songs, Smith and his merry band shared invaluable insights that ranged from endearing – “Edinburgh is so clean, it’s like a dreamland” – to the delightfully inane, “Everybody here is a ninja!” Exercising spontaneous artistic license, he entirely halted proceedings to pedantically correct his audience on their very slight reinterpretation of a chorus, to comic effect: “You’re about one semi-tone off, OK? Try again.”

In recent years, Roots Manuva has carefully etched a public persona as an introspective, self-styled poet. With convincing new additions from his latest release, the reluctant prince of the UK urban scene can be confident of a live arsenal of infectious crowd pleasers that deviate from the anxieties of his album work. On stage, he cuts a far more confident figure and, tellingly, mid-set he requests of his eclectic five-piece entourage, “Stop me if I’m getting too sentimental”. Awfully deep, Manuva.