Why Can They Tour...And He Can’t?

How can rap music generate nearly $800 million a year in record sales and yet be virtually shut out of the pop world’s lucrative concert business?

One reason for the absence of rap headliners from the current national ranking of the Top 25 concert attractions is that, for much of the last decade, the controversial genre has been plagued by perception problems that have their roots in several troubling incidents.

While hundreds of rap concerts have taken place peacefully in clubs around the country since the genre began catching the pop imagination in the mid-’80s, there have been enough highly publicized security problems to make parents, promoters and fans wary of large-scale rap tours.

That’s why the hip-hop world has so much at stake when the “Smokin’ Grooves” tour kicks off a 34-city excursion tonight in Sacramento.

The results of the House of Blues-sponsored tour--which includes stops Tuesday and Wednesday at the Universal Amphitheatre--could go a long way in determining the future of rap touring for years.

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The goal is to demonstrate that a quality rap show can be staged with the same professionalism and trouble-free environment as most other pop, rock and R&B; productions.

“A lot of people were afraid of this at first,” said Issac Tigrett, co-founder of House of Blues, the chain of restaurant-clubs. “Some were like, ‘Hey, this is a bad thing, man, there could be riots and all this other stuff.’ But I said, ‘Look . . . you have the greatest music that’s selling today, and if people are afraid of doing this tour, then we’ll do it.’ The lineup is just so cool.”

“There’s Lollapalooza, there’s a H.O.R.D.E,” said Cara Lewis, the William Morris agent who came up with the idea for the “Smokin’ Grooves” tour, which features some of the most acclaimed names in rap, including the Fugees, Cypress Hill and A Tribe Called Quest. “Why isn’t there a concert like that aimed toward more of an urban market?”

The answer lies partially in rap’s troubled history with live performance.

Among the outbreaks that first gave rap concerts a bad name: a summer 1986 Run-DMC concert at the Long Beach Arena in which 40 people were injured when fighting erupted between members of rival gangs, and a fall 1988 rap show at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, in which a young fan was stabbed to death while trying to recover a stolen gold chain. Twelve others were also injured.

More recently, the Fugees sponsored and performed in the free “HoodShock” outdoor concert in Harlem on June 27, with some of the top New York-based rap acts. The afternoon event, which attracted 15,000 fans, moved along without incident--for a while. But firecrackers and a lone gunshot set off a series of stampedes in the audience. After the dust cleared, between 20 and 30 people were injured in the crush, some requiring medical attention.

“There was a time in hip-hop where it was really wild and it hurt us,” said Ice-T, a founder of gangsta rap and a victim of the near ban on hard-core shows in major venues. “That’s why I pray to God that this is a peaceful tour, because it means there will be more tours if things go well.”

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Violence, however, hasn’t been the only problem facing live rap. Because major pop and rock promoters have tended to shy away from rap tours, acts have had to turn to inexperienced promoters at times. Consequently, rap tours have too often lacked organization, proper security and quality sound equipment, according to artists and executives in the music industry.

One of the last promising rap excursions was “The Chronic” tour in 1993. Featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Run-DMC, it was scheduled to stretch over four months. It was canceled after only seven shows, however, due to problems related to promotion, marketing and even selection of venues.

“There aren’t a lot of people attempting to mount [rap tours],” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, a concert industry publication. “I don’t think that the music incites [violence], but there’s a lack of established rap promoters and many of the building managers worry about the potential for gang violence, especially around the perimeters of the buildings.”

Rising insurance rates, which are calculated per capita for each show (with rates between 12 cents and $1.25 per person), have also been an obstacle facing rap promoters. The larger venues, out of fear of incidents, sometimes require hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront to insure the events--monies that many of the less established rap promoters simply can’t afford.

“Promoters buy their coverage on an annual rate. If the promoters have the proper coverage, then they won’t have any trouble supporting a rap show,” says Walter Howell of Entertainment Insurance Agency, a company that has written insurance for many of the major national tours and acts for more than 20 years.

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“It’s when the promoter doesn’t have things together that problems happen. Because the insurance companies don’t want to write one-offs.”

The House of Blues in West Hollywood is one of the few venues in the country where major rap acts, including Snoop Doggy Dogg and Ice Cube, regularly appear without incidents.

“Hip-hop is a storytelling music that faces obstacles no different than the blues did in the ‘40s and ‘50s,” Tigrett says with enthusiasm.

“It’s passionate, from the heart, and shows the real deal. If anything, because of the frequent social commentary, it’s a living historical document. We’re real proud to be associated with this tour.”

The mainstream venues that are staging the “Smokin’ Grooves” concerts seem to share Tigrett’s enthusiasm for the tour package, which also includes rappers Busta Rhymes and Spearhead, as well as reggae stars Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers.

Representatives of facilities in Hartford, Conn., Camden, N.J., and Atlanta all said Friday they were excited about the tour from the beginning and don’t anticipate problems.

They make a distinction, however, between this lineup, which they see as relatively mellow hip-hop, and hard-core “gangsta” rap.

“We’re not treating this like a hard-core rap show,” said Kathryn O’Rourke, director of marketing for Atlanta’s 19,000-seat Lakewood Amphitheatre, which hosts the tour on July 30 during the Olympic Games.

“This is not Tupac and Snoop and Dr. Dre. None of these acts have a history of violence. Cypress Hill is a little hard-core, but even when they performed [in Atlanta], there were no problems. We do big rock shows here 20 times a year, and to us, this is just another big rock show. I haven’t heard of any reasons why we should [take special precautions].”

The views are shared by Joyce Szudzik, a public relations representative for Camden’s 10,800-seat Garden State Arts Center, which stages the tour on Aug. 7. “The House of Blues name also puts a stamp of approval on it as a decent quality show.”

Officials at the 6,251-seat Universal Amphitheatre are also delighted to be the first Southern California site for the tour, which will end Sept. 2 at 15,000-seat Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

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“Pre-show sales have been strong, and we expect it to finish really well, selling out,” said Melissa Miller, vice president of talent for MCA Concerts. “A lot of these artists don’t tour often and fans welcome the chance to see them up close for the first time.”

The House of Blues organization has spent an estimated $4 million on the tour, including elaborate sets, trucks, lights and sound. Typically, the venues’ own security teams will work in conjunction with Anthony Davis Security, the same company that provides crowd control for Lollapalooza.

“Fans deserve the best,” said Eric Todd, tour coordinator. “You don’t pay $30 to see a knucklehead with six lights perform on stage for 30 minutes. If you wanted to just hear the music, that’s what the CD is for. We’re here to entertain.”

The Fugees, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest and Cypress Hill are not only among rap’s best-selling artists, but all have reputations for putting on entertaining live shows--mixing, in some cases, live instruments with spontaneous invention.

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They are acts that have managed to straddle the fence between mainstream acceptance and street credibility--the kind of artists that have videos on MTV, but also make records that boom from the back of jeeps and low-riders in cities around the country.

“There’s nothing alternative about us,” said the Fugees’ Prakazrel Michel in an interview earlier this year. “If we were truly ‘alternative,’ brothers in the ‘hood wouldn’t be gettin’ with our music. You got the Mobb Deep fans loving it, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers fans loving it. . . . That’s mass appeal.”

Even rap artists who aren’t on the tour are excited by what “Smokin’ Grooves” could mean to their field.

“[Venues and promoters] have always considered our music a bastard art form anyway and thought of the money earned from it as headache money,” said Public Enemy’s Chuck D., generally acknowledged as the most acclaimed figure ever in rap. “The House of Blues tour can set a positive precedent.

“We have to rebuild this industry from the ground up. There has to be an organization and a maturity from all levels, from the performance to the business side. Hip-hop is too influential worldwide and has so much unharnessed power to continue to be held back by these stigmas.”