Erykah Badu’s last British hit was six years ago, but her fans here haven’t forgotten her. The Dallas-based R&B star appeared to have forgotten her fans, however, when she kept them waiting for an hour in the pretty, but chilling surroundings of Somerset House. Having already squandered half her stage time, Badu then failed to appear at the start of the show, leaving two bemused backing singers to shake their hips for a full five minutes among clouds of dry ice. Her entrance, at least, was striking, thanks largely to a skintight, all-white, tracksuit-type outfit and matching headscarf tied around a sculpted Afro that resembled a newly pruned shrub.

Somehow, Badu managed to mangle cracked blues, smooth soul and smoky jazz scats, and while the result was honey-sounded, it was also edgy and unpredictable. Not for Badu precise re-creations of her hits. Instead, she played with the tempo of tracks, speeding her vocals up over funky percussion or drawing them out over languorous beats.

The big disappointment was the dearth of numbers from her nine-year-old debut, Baduizm, still by far her best-known album. The Grammy award-winning On & On made a brief appearance, but there was no Appletree, Certainly or 4 Leaf Clover. From the 2000 album Mama’s Gun, however, came a boisterous Booty that channelled the spirit of Nina Simone, classy soul cut Didn’t Cha Know and a brilliant Bag Lady set to a sparse rhythm track.

While her profile here has never been lower, back home, Badu remains a superstar. Her last release, the 2004 EP Worldwide Underground, picked up four Grammy nominations and from it came the night’s highlight, I Want You. Badu growled and moaned between delivering lines that washed like waves over insistent beats. “I been thinking about y’all all day, wanting to sing you this song,” she cooed. Ah, perhaps that was what kept her backstage for so long.

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