Call it hip-hopalooza

Kanye West finally got the platform he always felt destined to occupy on Saturday. With the city skyline to the west, Lake Michigan to the east, and about 50,000 fans chanting his name as the closing act of Lollapalooza’s second night, the native of Chicago’s South Side looked over at his beaming mom sitting beside the stage.

“See, Mom, I told ya,” he said. “I told ya I wanna rap. It works!”

West was the first hip-hop act to headline Lollapalooza, which in its fractured two-decade history has morphed from a traveling alternative-rock festival into a massive, three-day gathering of the musical tribes on Chicago’s lakefront that rivals Coachella (in California) and Bonnaroo (in Tennessee) as a summer festival destination.

The 130 performers ranged from children’s singer Ella Jenkins, who turned 82 over the weekend, to the pre-adolescent punk band the Blisters, which featured Sam and Spencer Tweedy, sons of singer Jeff Tweedy. Not to be outdone, Jeff Tweedy’s band Wilco was scheduled to be among the closing acts of the festival’s final day Sunday, along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Queens of the Stone Age.

This was not the Lollapalooza of Perry Farrell’s twisted past, a traveling freak show dominated by body piercings, tattoos and sometimes disturbing bands such as the Jesus Lizard. This was the new family-friendly Lollapalooza, with Farrell as jovial emcee and kids-stage performer and the creme of mainstream rock and rap spread across nine stages.

In recognition of how hip-hop dominates the youth culture that Lollapalooza once helped redefine, this year’s lineup was expanded to include more rap acts than ever. West topped a bill that included Britain’s Lady Sovereign, Lyrics Born and Blackalicious, among others.

West celebrated by dusting his set with cameos from Common, million-selling rapper Twista and rising star Lupe Fiasco, gliding on a skateboard to perform his hit “Kick Push.” Despite early technical problems that prompted West to grumble that his sound crew had “embarrassed me in front of my city,” the rapper delivered dramatic versions of “Jesus Walks,” “Gold Digger” and “Crack Music” with a large band that included a seven-piece string section outfitted as masked bandits.

West also briefly reprised the Gnarls Barkley hit “Crazy.” The instant summer classic was everywhere at the festival, performed by West, the Raconteurs and Gnarls Barkley’s Cee-Lo Green himself.

The Raconteurs’ version was the most surprising, with an animated Jack White clearly enjoying his hiatus from the White Stripes to share vocals and guitar duties with Brendan Benson. White also dug into a cover of Cher’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” with hair-raising conviction.

The Gnarls Barkley set was among the weekend’s most anticipated, and the duo of Green and DJ Danger Mouse, who confined himself to playing keyboards, did not disappoint. A 13-piece band took dark and unexpected detours, covering the Doors’ “Who Scared You?” and the Greenhornes’ “There Is an End,” but brightened things up just enough with the Motown groove of “Smiley Faces” and, of course, “Crazy.” Green belted out the chorus like a man on intimate terms with dementia, but he refused to turn it into an epic sing-along.

Similarly business-like was the iconic indie-rock trio Sleater-Kinney, which performed its final show outside the members’ adopted hometown of Portland, Ore., before calling it quits as a band. There were no tears or maudlin farewells, only pin-your-ears-back rock. Guitarist Carrie Brownstein whipped up a storm of feedback in tandem with drum dynamo Janet Weiss on “What’s Mine Is Yours.” Yet Weiss’ harmonica brought a wistful beauty to “Modern Girl,” and the closing “Turn It On” served as a fitting farewell. “Don’t go away,” Corin Tucker sang, “can’t stand the thought.”

Some of the festival’s best moments were the unexpected ones. The bane of a hundred-plus bands is that it’s impossible to see most of them. The joy is that fans on their way to see one group might stumble into something even better. Such a moment occurred when the Denton, Texas, quintet Midlake broke out the song “Roscoe” soon after the festival opened Friday. A chorus pitched between a hymn and a mournful drone wafted across the park like an intoxicating breeze, pulling curious passersby closer to the stage.

Canadian chanteuse Leslie Feist showcased a pretty, delicate voice, perfect for refashioning contemporary pop songs into hipster lounge and bossa nova favorites. But she also flashed a tougher edge, with brusque blues chord clusters that PJ Harvey might envy, and a winning sense of humor. She needed it, as the roar from nearby stages occasionally threatened to overwhelm her softer fare. “The next song is very quiet,” she advised at one point. “So you’ll have to concentrate hard to find the romance in it.”

Better equipped for the sound wars was Lyrics Born, a.k.a. Bay Area MC Tom Shimura, who wedged bursts of rhyme into party-starting arrangements played by a crack soul-funk band. Also rising to the occasion were the New Pornographers. Looking out at the vast crowd, singer A.C. Newman sounded like he wanted to pinch himself: “How did we get to Lollapalooza?”

That was a question best asked by Manu Chao, a legendary figure in Europe, North Africa and South America but not much of a draw at Lollapalooza, as he played up against West across the park on Saturday night. Nonetheless, the Paris-based artist received a hero’s welcome from a few thousand fans. Backed by a five-piece band, Chao blended calypso grooves, punk stomp and reggae riddims, and he sang multilingual protest songs. The likes of “Desaparecido” evoked the populist rage that has made Chao a towering figure in Third World countries. At Lollapalooza, however, he was just one of many singing on a sultry summer weekend in the Midwest.

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Greg Kot is a Chicago Tribune music critic. Tribune writer Andy Downing contributed to this report.