The T’s Have It in Rap Night at the Palace

It was T time at the Palace on Thursday night, a celebration of the many T’s in the world of rap. Howie T, Toddy T, Sweet Tee, Grandmaster D.S.T. and T La Rock weren’t scheduled--Ice Cream T was, but she didn’t show up--so the Palace crowd had to settle for T for two: local rappers Ice-T and King T.

Not that long ago, in the brief period between high-energy rap and the ascendancy of gangster-chic, Ice-T was the best-known rapper on the West Coast, and his canny blend of raw Bronx-style rhyming and slick L.A. production made him an underground rap hit. Where Easterners Melle Mel and Run-D.M.C. may have occasionally rapped about desolation in general, he celebrated the rough beauty of violence as one who had seen it, and his hard-core reputation was enough to make him a credible anti-drug, anti-violence spokesman among gangsters themselves.

These days, outslicked by MC Hammer and outgunned by N.W.A, Ice-T seems determined to become the Redd Foxx of rap, the guy who leers through songs like “Sex” and “LGBNAF”, sometimes like that sort of man who persists in telling dirty jokes at a party whether anybody laughs or not. Some new songs, performed here for the first time, have awesomely danceable, Public Enemy-inspired beats but betray the same obsession with the puerile.

There are no giant Uzis in Ice-T’s show these days, no visible weaponry save the pistol medallion slung around his neck on a fat gold chain, but at least a dozen people were on stage with him, most folding their arms on their chest and glowering. He rapped into a headset he’d hidden under his hat, which tended to make his show even less focused than it had been earlier this year--though he’s never sounded better.

Though opener King T is an enormously appealing young hardcore rapper--he clearly loved it on stage, striding about and brandishing a contraband can of the malt liquor he endorses--and his deejay, Pooh, is among the best scratchers around, he’s still relatively new to the large stage. Give him another year.