POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rapper Def Jef Was Fun, Funky, but After That It Was Downhill

The rap show Friday night at the Celebrity Theatre started at the pinnacle and wound up in the pits.

The long, delay-filled evening of steadily diminishing returns ended with teen-aged headliners Wrecks-N-Effect grinding to a wretchedly amateurish embarrassment of a finish. Another New York rap crew, Redhead Kingpin & the F.B.I., turned in a mediocre middle set. But Def Jef, a more experienced rapper based in Los Angeles, made it all worthwhile with a near-perfect opening set that was fun, funky, and politically focused--a textbook example of all that’s good in rap music.

For 35 deftly paced minutes, Def Jef (real name: Jeffrey Fortson), disc jockey Erick Vaan and a trio of wonderful dancers called the Soul Brothers offered a cornucopia of rhyme, rhythm and eye-popping motion. Throughout his show, Def Jef expertly interwove his key themes: rap as a call to party, rap as a foundation for friendship and rap as a vehicle for expressing black pride and black protest.

A lot of rap acts offer impressive dance acrobatics. But Jef and his crew used a dance sequence to make a point about black heritage and aspirations. As the three Soul Brothers showed off their moves in dance solos, they departed from the usual herky-jerky, robotic pattern of contemporary hip-hop dance and reached back into their cultural tradition. The routines featured loose-limbed moves derived from Africa and funky but urbane steps that recalled Vaudeville-era tap-dancing. To drive home the point, the dance sequence ended with a ceremonial passage in which the dancers moved with interlocked arms while the soundtrack carried segments of a Black Muslim speech and a Bob Marley song extolling the racial heritage of blacks.

Def Jef conveyed the same message in his concluding rap, “Black to the Future.” While taking a controversial stand on what tactics are acceptable for effecting change (“Through violence or nonviolence, I don’t care--as long as we get there”), the song’s tone, like Jef’s attitude, was clearly positive.

Jef’s motto for rap--”It’s a black thing, but everybody’s invited”--exemplified his call for racial pride while skirting exclusionary racial chauvinism.

In his headband, short dreadlocks, and semi-military garb, the bearded, chunkily built Def Jef looked as if he might have been a member of Che Guevarra’s revolutionary band. But Jef’s delivery, though pointed, was never strident, and the show never became annoyingly preachy. The rapper was no stiff polemicist but an exceptionally confident and charming entertainer with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a capacity for enjoying himself immensely. Funky numbers such as “Droppin’ Rhymes on Drums” reached dance-party nirvana; the show reached the right balance between the jukebox and the soapbox.

Def Jef was a natural performer. Like a rap Sinatra, he was able to use deft hand motions and effective body English to underscore his lyrics. He also was a capable dancer and a supple, clear-voiced rhymer.

Far from bogging the show down, some of the fast-moving set’s nicest moments came when Jef and the tall, lanky Vaan engaged in easy, back-and-forth banter about what song they would perform next. This Mutt and Jeff pair’s ribbing revealed a warm mutual affection--and when they switched places for a while, Def Jef proved himself a flash record scratcher as well as a sharp rapper. This crew made a well-planned performance seem like casual, happy play. It was a pleasure hanging out with them.

The only blemish on Def Jef’s set was a passing comment that contained gratuitous homophobia and insensitivity about AIDS--a common but unforgivable blind spot among rappers that undermines the genre with its hypocrisy and prejudice.

Redhead Kingpin (real name: David Guppy) came off as an energetic but lightweight rap dandy. Mugging and strutting through his 22-minute set, he seemed like a smug frat boy who shows off a lot but knows very little. The most memorable thing this New Jersey rapper with the red Eraserhead hairstyle did was drop his trousers and dance in his shorts, drawing squeals from his female fans.

His entourage included a dancer, introduced as Guppy’s younger brother, who spent the entire show with an infant’s rubber pacifier in his mouth. That was fitting in a way, since most of Redhead Kingpin’s raps were puerile boasts and sexual fantasies. One more mature number, the Spike Lee-inspired social commentary “Do the Right Thing,” was punchy enough, but Guppy’s poor enunciation robbed it of bite. On the other raps, it didn’t really matter that the words were hard to make out.

Wrecks-N-Effect, a trio that often collaborates with Redhead Kingpin on record, shared his fixation with sexy songs and bump-and-grind moves. But while Kingpin at least kept his show moving, Wrecks-N-Effect’s half-hour set was a fumbling affair with long gaps in which the members resembled aimless adolescents hanging out on a playground with no idea what to do next.

The trio came close to committing child abuse when it lifted a boy toddler out of the audience, apparently with the aim of prodding him to make advances to a girl of about 8 who had also come on stage. Wrecks-N-Effect let this frightened, bewildered tot stand alone on stage sucking a finger for what seemed an eternity, apparently in hopes he would make some sort of cute whoopee with the little girl. It was the brainless prank of rank amateurs, teen-agers without the slightest instinct for performance.

Wrecks-N-Effect also showed a complete lack of integrity toward the art of rapping. Throughout the show, the trio worked with an aural net: While they mouthed the words to their raps, a prerecorded backing track of the vocal parts boomed with far greater volume than the real-time rapping.

It’s in the nature of rap music to use canned rhythm tracks and instrumental bits. But the point of live rapping is to dominate a stage with a real voice and a real personality. While Def Jef employed some electronic vocal embellishments during his set, there was no question that his performance was real. As for the fakers in Wrecks-N-Effect, they might as well have stayed home and mailed in a tape. That way, they would have been spared the scattered booing that greeted the end of their pathetic show.