It’s spare time with Dizzee

Dizzee Rascal is ready for the hip-hop big time, but compromise isn’t yet on the agenda. So it was a small, devoted crowd that greeted him at the El Rey Theater on Tuesday, ready for the young Londoner’s storm of clattering beats and urban disarray, all hot breath and digital underground.

The sound is both fast-forward and rooted in the rawest core of hip-hop, with minimal textures shaped by drums-and-bass and Jamaican dancehall, a radical blend-of-the-moment labeled “grime,” a word as evocative as “grunge” and even less descriptive. Dizzee and (to a lesser extent) the Streets have finally recast some hip-hop in the U.K.’s own image, with some potential shockwaves for the U.S. -- but not yet.

So in Los Angeles, Dizzee remains an underground taste, even as he wins big prizes and deserved accolades back home. It was not a full house, but virtually the entire crowd moved onto the dance floor and up close to the stage, with very few lagging behind.

Dizzee is essentially the same artist live as he is on record: spare, blunt, with just enough polish to get it all across.

He began the night as he often does, slouched in a chair onstage as he unfolded the brooding rap of “Sittin’ Here,” his delivery cryptic and dreamy.

“Respect Me” (from his second album, “Showtime”) was vaguely threatening and seething with frustration: “You people are gonna respect me if it kills you!”

But he’s comfortable in that darkness, and as playful in his Scrooge McDuck T-shirt as he is troubled within his lyrics, quicker to break a mold than fit the hip-hop sound of the moment.