Rappers keep it young at heart

Shortly before Lupe Fiasco kicked off Power 106’s annual Cali Christmas show on Thursday, the popular urban station brought venerable radio host Big Boy on stage to warm up the audience. Almost as an afterthought, the longtime morning drive-time staple explained to the fans on hand that Fiasco was here tonight to represent “real hip-hop.”

The offhand statement seemed to say more about the state of contemporary urban Top 40 radio than anything about Fiasco. But with the world of commercial rap increasingly angling itself toward a young, teenage and heavily female demographic, Fiasco was indeed the evening’s token nod toward lyricism and complexity.

Undeniably the show’s highlight, Fiasco performed a 15-minute set to a half-empty Gibson Amphitheatre as though his entire career depended on it. Of course, in a way it does. His sophomore release, “The Cool,” is slated for release in just over a week and Atlantic Records suits are praying that it moves more units than his underperforming debut. So the Chicago-bred rapper is a litmus test to see whether an intelligent, nuanced rapper can be commercially viable in 2007 (Kanye West excluded).

Judging from the warm reception he received, Fiasco won over the crowd as he skittered across the stage, a ball of nervous energy clad in a black dress shirt and gray-blue necktie, performing his most familiar material: a verse from West’s “Touch the Sky,” the ode to skateboards, “Kick Push,” and his latest single, the Matthew Santos-assisted “Superstar.”

Yet the applause for Fiasco was tepid compared to the wall-shaking roars elicited by the artists who followed, including Miami-based crunk rapper Pitbull, whose bilingual raps played well to the heavily Hispanic crowd.

Despite his animated performance, knee-buckling levels of bass and an occasional burst of impressive rapid-fire raps, Pitbull’s lyrical vapidity was stunning even for something that’s not “real hip-hop.” The other rappers who followed -- Fabolous, Cassidy and Baby Bash -- were little better, dull caricatures studded in diamonds, stuck spewing stale punch-line raps and pandering plays to “the ladies.”

Tallahassee, Fla.-based vocoder specialist T-Pain was arguably the night’s most anticipated act, as the 22-year-old R&B; singer and his two hype men engendered deafening wails from a crowd thrilled at the prospect of seeing the man partially responsible for nearly 10% of the Billboard Hot 100 as of the beginning of last month.

But T-Pain’s brand of lewd alien-sounding seduction fell flat in person, with T-Pain looking more like LeVar Burton from “Star Trek” trying to do an impression of Roger Troutman than a smooth R&B; Casanova.