Scarface Produces Mostly Mixed Results in Performance at the House of Blues

Scarface is a traditionalist, a gangsta veteran committed to hip-hop’s core elements, to tough talk about “money and power,” but with enough modern flavor to keep his voice alive. It’s fueled a lasting solo career far beyond his role with the notorious Houston group the Geto Boys, even as most of his contemporaries have fallen away.

At the House of Blues on Thursday, Scarface was joined by his Geto Boys collaborator Willie D., and together they were often able to tap into the energy of their best-known tales of sex, violence and cartoonish extremes.

But the Geto Boys oeuvre of gunfights and necrophilia has perhaps lost some offensiveness and bite at a time when Eminem is rapping about killing his wife. These days, as Jane’s Addiction once declared, nothing’s shocking.

Scarface is most effective in the studio, where he might actually pick up an instrument (piano, violin, guitar or drums), as he does on his new “The Last of a Dying Breed.” But his results on stage were mixed Thursday, focused primarily on his voice and a single DJ. Although the Houston-based rapper captured the deep funk and bravado of his best work, he fell flat elsewhere.

Scarface and Willie D. used the sparse arrangements to their advantage on “I Seen a Man Die,” which was set against a hard, evocative groove. So the 75-minute performance wasn’t about shock value, but a mixture of message and entertainment--which was worthwhile, though hardly enough to explain the depth of sound and vision behind Scarface’s staying power.