POP MUSIC REVIEW : Big Daddy Kane Sets Rap-id Pace in Anaheim

Fast action and force of personality are what count most on a live rap stage, and Big Daddy Kane was a force unleashed at gale speed as he topped a bill of three high-charting New York rappers on Friday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.

Too many rap acts haven’t the foggiest idea of how to pace a show. They’ll wander aimlessly, starting and stopping their songs at random, letting the whole proceeding slide into a trough. Kane has found a better way. Instead of just swiping bits and pieces from James Brown records, like virtually every rapper on Earth, he seems to have absorbed the gist of Brown’s formula for live performance: make it frenzied, and keep the action coming nonstop.

Early in the 37-minute set the frenzy was formless, geared mainly to stirring up an already receptive crowd. But with his deejay Mister Cee switching the beat from song to song without pause, the show gathered momentum and took shape. Kane joined his two supporting dancers for hot workouts showcasing whirlwind solo moves and athletic unison steps. On “Raw,” a brag-rap that rehashes the most overworked rapper’s theme--”I am the greatest”-- Kane backed up the boasting with a commanding, imperious baritone.

He worked guest rappers into the show (Grandmaster Kaz and Ice Cube, from the controversial N.W.A, who was kept under wraps by a ski jacket, a wool cap and an under-amplified microphone) without bogging it down. Kane also brought substance to the proceedings with socially conscious numbers such as the black-pride rap “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” playing his own lines off the audience’s chorus sing-along.

Unfortunately--with a capital U--Kane was at his most emphatic in delivering a vile couplet that broadcast his hatred for homosexuals. One can only hope that some clear, brave voices will emerge in hip-hop, heavy metal and other branches of pop music to answer this kind of bigotry. One of Kane’s black-pride raps makes a big deal over a black being chosen Miss America, but his hater’s approach to gays would disown a cultural giant like James Baldwin because of how he chose to lead his private life. Pathetic.

Biz Markie (pronounced marquee ), a boyhood buddy of Kane’s, also succeeded in conveying some personality, and (aided considerably by that receptive, eager-to-participate crowd) in maintaining a house-rocking energy level. Biz is to rap what the Coasters were to ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll--a likeable clown whose act is built on jokes and novelties. He milked his current hit single, “Just a Friend,” for all it was worth, leading the audience in crooned chorus after chorus in his off-key bellow of a non-singing voice.

With his sputtering, mumbly delivery, the hulking Biz isn’t the world’s sharpest rapper, and with such gross-humor song subjects as mucus and bad breath, he isn’t exactly socially significant. But that unsinkable, clownish instinct kept the Biz Mark’s 28-minute set steadily afloat.

Female rapper MC Lyte’s peak material--memorable, imaginatively pointed story-songs like “I Cram to Understand U” and “Cappuccino”--is several cuts above anything by Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, and most other rappers. But Lyte left those stories untold, and largely abdicated her choppy, pause-filled set to her crew of bump-and-grind male dancers, who kept stripping to their bikini briefs in an attempt to turn the show into a Chippendale’s routine.

There aren’t many strong females in rap, and it’s a shame that one of the few let the boys in the band overshadow her with insipid antics. It would have been far better had Lyte, who has a sharp, effective rap delivery, taken control and projected her own personality and her own idea of sexuality. Instead of making her own mark, Lyte’s lightweight set seemed geared to warming up the crowd for the male rappers who followed.