POP MUSIC REVIEW : D.J. Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince Fizzle After a Promising Start

The Fresh Prince was a less than royal rapper Friday night, squandering the impressive efforts of his inventive record-scratching partner, the nimble D.J. Jazzy Jeff.

While D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince have been rocking the pop charts lately with a Top 10 album and a Top 20 single, the duo from Philadelphia was only sporadically able to rock a less-than-half-capacity house at the 2,500-seat Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.

After a promising start, Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes) and the Fresh Prince (Will Smith) found themselves playing to an audience that appeared generally unmotivated, with crossed arms and stationary bodies outnumbering flapping limbs and shaking booty.

It wasn’t a case of the rappers being confronted with an inert crowd, either. Los Angeles home girls J.J. Fad had energized the audience with a short but zesty opening set of stylish trio raps and romping choreography that was a cross between Motown dance steps and a high school pompon squad strutting its stuff. Group leader M.C.J.B. (Juana Burns) and the peppery Baby-D (Dania Birks) stood out in the trio’s sharp renditions of simple but catchy brag-raps. (J.J. Fad also opens for Jazzy Jeff on Thursday at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.)

On their current album, “He’s the D.J., I’m the Rapper,” D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince offer wry rap confections that come across on the strength of Smith’s ability to create a disarming wise-guy persona. Besides the usual rap braggadocio, the duo comments on the lighter side of teen-age life, taking up such concerns as video games, the inscrutable behavior of girls (with a bit too much misogyny for comfort) and the more comical aspects of parental stodginess. On record, at least, Smith could pass as a rapping Ferris Bueller, charming with a witty, conversational delivery that lends itself to extended rhymed storytelling.

In concert, he was more like an inept basketball coach, calling all the wrong formations and taking timeouts when he should have been going for the fast break.

Townes’ DJ work took a back seat in the second half as Smith delivered such hit raps as “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble,” failing to handle any of them with the light touch of the recorded versions.

The Fresh Prince gave himself and Jazzy Jeff a last-gasp pep talk before performing their current hit, “A Nightmare on My Street,” a parody of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” teen-age exploitation horror films.

“If we drop this record (i.e., play this song) and the crowd don’t go wild, I think we pretty much had it, pally wally,” he said.

Just like the victims of Freddie Krueger, resident slasher of the “Nightmare” series, the Fresh Prince’s worst fears were confirmed.