Pop Music Reviews : X-Clan Rappers Put Message Over Grooves

They wore pounds of beads and leather fezzes; women shimmied behind them in African-cloth bikinis. Sidemen twirled red-black-and-green Afrikan flags, as if it were half-time at the Coliseum. They led their audience in Zulu war chants, proselytized for a Brooklyn political-action group called Blackwatch, and asked the musical question, “How Black Is It?” (The answer came booming back, “Very, very black.”) One of them mopped his brow halfway through the set, and said, “Isn’t it great to be sweaty and black?”

They were the hot New York political rap group X-Clan, making their West Coast debut at a packed Hollywood Live on Thursday. But the group’s rappers Lumumba Professor X and Grand Verbalizer Funkin’ Lesson Brother J could have been performing in an “In Living Color” parody of militant hip-hop if they weren’t so serious about what they were doing.

Between sermons they rapped to beats taken from George Clinton, rapped professionally and remarkably solemnly, never for a moment sacrificing the sanctity of their message for the sake of the groove. Topic A . . . and B and C and D . . . was the semiotics of Blackness, from its roots in African prehistory to lynchings that might have happened last week, smoothly put in context. You could admire their act, but it wasn’t easy to like. X-Clan appears again at Hollywood Live tonight.