If it was meant to be a secret in the first place, then the veritable pantheon of fans trailing around the Roundhouse wearing shutter sunglasses and 'Glow In The Dark' tour t shirts gave a clear indication of how well kept it had been. Before a single note had been played, a certain hip-hop maverick from Chicago had irreparably stolen the limelight away from the headline artist.
Bearing in mind the circus of celebrity that was about to unveil itself on stage in the next hour, it was perhaps unsurprising that Kid British never really got a look in from a clearly distracted crowd. It seems entirely callous to castigate a band for being lightweight when they name their album It Was This Or Football but on the evidence of 'Sunny Days' and 'Lost in London' maybe a trial at FC United wouldn't have gone amiss for the Manchester collective.
Clearly then, Mr Hudson had some work to do to assert himself and to his credit, the London based singer did largely succeeded on his own terms. Opening with 'One Specific Thing', his culture clash of steel drums, lilting guitar and chiming keyboards threw a welcome curveball to those waiting for a selection of Radio One friendly hip-hop. Even when G.O.O.D. Music label mate Kid Cudi turned up on stage, the ensuing cover of Day 'n' Nite was tinged with an acerbic African flavour.
However, the cruelly ironic twist came when Hudson began to unleash songs off his forthcoming 'Straight No Chaser' LP. Heavily produced and lacking in the brazened honesty of his earlier work, they read as a flagrant concession to chart topping ambition rather than a genuine change in output. No doubt this is exactly what Kanye intends for his protégé but given his own '808s and Heartbreaks' wasn't exactly a tour de force, the unnecessary over compensation in this direction is ill advised.
The K bomb was finally dropped in the encore and after arbitrarily running through 'Heartless' and 'Paranoid' the moment of Hudson's coronation had arrived. "Before You make the biggest mistake of your life" he screamed as the opening synthline from forthcoming single 'Supernova' stuttered in, "just give me a chance to make it right.". It may have been controlled, it may have been calculated but if Hudson can leave his crowd's chanting the refrain "You've got it wrong if you say our love is gone" into the night without the help of his 'mentor' then he could come close to becoming a star in his own right.
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