POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Aggressive East Coast Rap at the Olympic

Welcome to the New York school of hard-core rap, with mumbled rhymes and beefed-up electronic beats--currently the East Coast equivalent of West Coast gangsta style.

Judging from the New York rap revue at the heavily patrolled concrete bunker of the Olympic Auditorium Friday night, there are still crucial differences between East Coast and West Coast rap these days. While West Coast guys tend to make music for the dance floor, the East Coast guys tend to write slightly sharper rhymes. But New York stuff is now as aggressive as anything coming out of Compton.

The rapper Method Man, of Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan and the grand pooh-bah of the new hard-core style, was backed by a bass line so loud that half the people in the audience were clutching their ears. His rapping, though, was extraordinary and trance-inducing.

His Wu-Tang associate, very modestly named God, muttered through a couple of songs at the beginning of the set. Before him, Keith Murray rapped a version of his minor hit, “The Most Beautifulest Thing in This World,” in which he basically chimed in on the choruses while letting the audience chant most of the lyrics.

Redman writes extremely complex rhymes filled with political metaphor, but you couldn’t really hear them in the echoey confines of the Olympic. Wu-Tang associate Shyheim was impressive in the few moments in his set that he did rap, but he basically acted as if he had wandered onto the stage by mistake.