"Janelle! Mon-áe!" yells the Birmingham crowd as the singer is pushed on in a wheelchair, wearing a straitjacket. She leaps up, throwing off the garment to reveal a Michael Jackson-esque outfit before performing some frenetic Jacko dance spins. "I'm givin' 'em what they love," she sings.

For the next 90 minutes, this provides a manifesto as she races through garage rock, sci-fi R&B, Prince-type wailing guitar funk, 1960s girl pop, weird synthesiser sounds and woozy New Orleans jazz. And that's just the first few numbers. It's not hard to see why the Kansas-born 28-year-old has won enormous acclaim, as well as fans from Prince to David Bowie.

With Monáe sporting her trademark Little Richard quiff, the gig is a visual spectacle, too. The Electric Lady performs in a giant, white-curtained square that looks like a huge padded cell, her arena-sized lungs powering her singing and rapping. All the onstage accoutrements – synthesisers, drums, amplifiers, guitars, outfits – are either black or white. The monochrome explosion gains another eyebrow-raising dimension when she re-emerges wearing a man's braces and what look like jodhpurs.

Monáe makes a riotously-received speech about how the world can never be free while the 257 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls aren't, and spins with a cape like James Brown. At her best, she's a dizzying, dancing, female amalgam of the Godfather of Soul, Prince and Jacko. Covers of Prince's Let's Go Crazy and the Jackson 5's I Want You Back raise the bar very high, but her own Primetime and Cold War hold their own among such company.

She should certainly be playing much bigger venues. By the time Monáe has commanded the crowd to sit on the floor, and ended the night being carried horizontally by the audience's hands, she has delivered a live masterclass worthy of a true star.

• At Brixton Academy on Friday 9 May, and V Festival, Chelmsford, 16-17 August