This summer, 22-year-old Hardy Caprio was called upon by London’s Metro newspaper to defend UK rap from accusations that it fuelled knife crime. He seemed an odd choice for the task. Early on in the opening show of his UK tour, he performs the freestyle over Tinie Tempah’s Wifey Riddim that brought him to prominence. It is definitely rooted in a tough Croydon upbringing, but presented its author as the model of level-headed focus: shunning weed, disinterested in “hood status”, chastising himself for a brief flirtation with fraud. Since then, he has graduated from Brunel University with a first-class degree (in finance and accounting), and his music has become more sunlit and commercial. Judging by his videos, he’s more the go-to guy if you were looking for someone to defend UK rap from the accusation that it fuels a desire to sit by a swimming pool surrounded by women in thong bikinis.

He has been rewarded with an audience who are word-perfect and strikingly young. Caprio hypes them up – it appears shouting “oggy oggy oggy” at a crowd still works magic – but they don’t need hyping: the atmosphere is like a particularly sweaty end-of-term party. More rooted in American R&B than grime, his music invokes memories of the pop-rap crossover of a decade ago, but it’s more low-key, less rapacious in its desire to make the charts. Best Life and Unsigned are melodic but muted, their appeal more reliant on wordplay than DayGlo hooks; the track Jezebel’s Sade samples and meandering sax lends its sound a richness and depth.

The gig is over in 45 minutes, a reminder that Caprio has yet to release an album or full-length mixtape, but as the audience file out, steaming in the autumn air, his future looks as assured as his performance.

• Touring the UK and Ireland until 20 October