Clean-Cut Young M.C. in an Age of Gangster-Chic

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Los Angeles rapper Young M.C. (nee Marvin Young) always seems to be in the wrong place at the right time. Like at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim the other night.

His album, originally scheduled as the first LP from Delicious Vinyl, was pushed back six months when the monster success of “Wild Thing”--which Young wrote half the words for--caused Tone Loc’s album to be rushed into print instead. (This week Young has a Top 10 single and a Top 20 album of his own, but in the media he’s still “Young (Wild Thing) M.C.”) He’s clean-cut in an age of gangster-chic, his rhymes too clever by half.

And after a million gigs opening for everybody from Tone Loc to Public Enemy, Young M.C. finally landed a tour . . . opening, but kind of as a co-star, for Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One’s street-savvy message posse.

Young raps in a clear, smooth tenor; he enunciates complex rhymes cleanly as a scat singer. Young’s swinging performance is closer to Smoky Robinson’s than to Kool Moe Dee’s--he knows he’s an entertainer, not a guy at a poetry reading.

But the Celebrity Theatre is a brutal venue--no rapper, not even Public Enemy or N.W.A, has ever survived the sound system and the rotating stage--and the crowd was clearly KRS-One’s, come more to be enlightened than entertained. The same bill appears at the Palace tonight.