Friday 17/08/07 Prince @ The O2 Arena, London

When Prince played a rain-soaked Superbowl in February of this year, America's jaw dropped. Here was a fifteen minute glimpse into what popular music had been achingly missing - an original song-and-dance man. There have been several pretenders to The Purple One; fervently studying his 80s blueprints but always sounding as though they were playing catch-up.

Halfway through Prince’s mammoth 21-date residency at the o2 Arena and the month-long pop party shows no sign of quelling. Prince being Prince, he’s switched the setlist, and the support artists, to keep proceedings fresh. Tonight is the turn of RnB siren Mya; she races through a set of slick yet unexciting grooves before finishing up with Labelle’s ‘Lady Marmalade’ - a number one single she reworked with Pink, Lil Kim, Missy Elliot and seemingly half of RnB’s sisterhood.

There’s a sizable break in proceedings that allows the big screens to promote the merchandise on offer. Unfortunately, Gigwise can’t afford to shell out £55 on a tambourine so remains seated for the start of the funk marathon. The lights go down and the arena swells with uncontrollable shrieks and yelps from the palpable crowd. The introduction is a bit irksome - with the big screens showing footage of Prince’s induction into the UK Music Hall Of Fame. Once the self-aggrandising is put to one side, the Symbol-shaped stage lights up like a blinding disco with the synth-driven funk of ‘1999’ making 20,000 backsides blast out of their seats.

Prince emerges, naturally, from the centre of the multicoloured showpiece and wastes no time in giving his Fender Stratocaster a good work-out. Such is the enormity of the setlist that it allows little time for idle banter - it presents itself as a hit-laden mega mix from the 80s most prolific musician. The new material from ‘Planet Earth’ is hardly touched, although ‘The Guitar’ presents Prince with another opportunity to showboat with axe-grinding par excellence. A cover of Wild Cherry’s ‘Play That Funky Music White Boy’ has Prince pulling punters from out of the front rows who then proceed to strut their way to all corners of the stage.