While it may seem inconceivable to older hip-hop fans, many in the grime generation have no idea who Nas, KRS-One or Gang Starr are.

It's understandable when one considers that Loyle Carner and his peers weren't even born when Nas released his epochal first album Illmatic in 1994, and that the UK scene was self-generated before the music industry gatekeepers found the likes of Stormzy and Lethal Bizzle impossible to ignore.

Yet for all its virtues, the grime supernova left behind some of the thoughtful qualities possessed of hip-hop giants who knew the roads but also considered themselves philosophers of the concrete blocks.

So it wasn't without significance that Carner's DJ, Rebel Kleff, began a short warm-up with Nas's Get Down as he opened to one of most youthful crowds at the WOMAD festival in Wiltshire.

To draw a line between a multi-platinum selling rapper and a relative newcomer to the British music scene might seem overblown, and it's arguable that Carner is better compared with more introspective lyricists such A Tribe Called Quest or fellow Londoner Roots Manuva.

But on this evidence Carner, whose album Yesterday's Gone has been nominated for the Mercury Prize, really is worthy of such comparisons.

Like Nas the rapper, real name Ben Coyle-Larner, has gone his own inimitable way, shunning any glorification of guns, drugs and gangs.

Bolting out on stage in front of a giant No.7 football shirt bearing his surname and wearing an "I Love MIchelle Obama" T-shirt, the Liverpool fan entered the fray with the Isle of Arran, about a father who didn't want him, and Mean it in the Morning, a take on the struggles of love and success.

A British Sign Language interpreter to the side of the stage showed his embracing touch and was an indicator of how clear his lyrics are, even delivered at speed.

The family man dedicated two songs to his mother, who was in the crowd, including one entitled Florence, imagining what it would be like if her wish to have a little girl came true.

The 22-year-old's close bonds with those around him also shone through when Rebel Kleff, his DJ and best friend, joined him front of stage to drop some bars.

Carner twice broke his set down into acapella freestyles, about the only times he shifted his eyes from the crowd as he searched for words. "Ain't nothing changed but the size of the stage," he ended one rhyme, the words of an artist who remains grounded among friends and family.

He finished in street poet mode, asking the crowd to go easy on him with a newly-written rumination on life on the road and how it takes him away from his loved ones.

What emerged was not just a flagbearer bringing elements of an earlier age of hip-hop and its downbeat instrumentation and sampled beats to a new generation, but an artist in his own right.

The rapper left by giving props to Jeremy Corbyn, leading to the inevitable festival crowd chant supporting the Labour leader, before giving his hat to a 10-year-old fan backstage.

While grime has its fair share of redeeming qualities with Carner the inner-city strife and struggles are given real - and largely clean - poetic form, and in the Siam Tent he took a new generation with him.

On this evidence his future can be summed up with a line from Nas - the world is yours.