Apply a little sandpaper

SOMEWHERE between a quick-rapping Tom Waits and a sinisterly singing Cookie Monster lies Lyrics Born’s funky, funky voice. If sandpaper could melodically ride pop-heavy hip-hop hooks with danceable gusto and a knowing wink to the underground ... well, you get the idea. It’s a welcome bunch of raspy coarseness.

“John Coltrane played the saxophone, you know, Miles Davis played the trumpet, Jimi [Hendrix] played the guitar, [my voice] is my instrument,” the Bay Area-based MC-singer born Tom Shimura says. “It just sounds the way it does.... I have to use it.”

Lyrics Born brings his instrument to the freshly remodeled El Rey Theatre tonight on a bill he’s sharing with Cut Chemist, and he’ll be bringing some other music-playing devices as well. Having rocked it with just a DJ -- his wife, soulstress Joyo Velarde -- and sometimes less for years, Lyrics Born recently incorporated a full band into his live show. The added bodies have added energy, and on Oct. 31 he’ll celebrate the growth by releasing “Overnight Encore: Lyrics Born Live!” on Quannam Projects, recorded over two nights of shows in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia.

“I could have just as easily taped a show in San Francisco or taped a show in L.A. or New York, but I thought this would be a little more unique,” he said. “To my knowledge, I don’t think there’s ever been a live [hip-hop] record that was done in Australia. I’m always looking at what things people haven’t done yet.”

He was born in Tokyo but raised primarily in the States, and has been a fixture on the Bay Area underground hip-hop scene for more than a decade, affiliating in 1990 with the Quannum crew, then known as Solesides, when they all met at UC Davis. The collective has produced some of the genre’s most successful purists, including DJ Shadow, Blackalicious and Jeff Chang (author of the critically acclaimed “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop”), but many in the typically labeled backpack pack have put aside media-created genrefications in favor of city unity.

There’s probably not another metropolis where independent and commercial hip-hop blend as seamlessly as San Francisco and Oakland. The harsh line created between occasionally abstract, indie artists such as the Quannum crew and the angrier, street-focused, commercial fare of MCs E-40 and others is no longer the great divide.

“We are all trying to do it, regardless of what genre it’s perceived to be,” he says. “The Bay is a very diverse place to begin with, it just all goes along with what we’re about culturally. [It’s] not that big. Myself, E-40, Q-Bert, Heiro, EA-Ski, Mistah FAB, we all only live, like, 20 minutes from each other.”

Unlike the surprise of how well DJ Shadow’s brooding instrumentals work with the hyphy rowdiness of the Federation, Lyrics Born’s hook-happy style, which emerged from “Later That Day ... ,” was never far from the dance floor. Filled with filthy bass lines as in the good-feeling song about nightmares, “Bad Dreams,” and the call-and-response begging track “Callin’ Out,” his debut solo record is atypical of his lyrically heavy and often dance-light contemporaries of the small club circuit -- but it wasn’t always that way.

As one half of Latryx, alongside Lateef the Truth Speaker, Lyrics Born spit verbally dense and syllable-packed bars over equally complex beats; it was headphone music at its most decadent and college radio was eating it up. There were dance-worthy gems to be sure, be it “Lady Don’t Tek No” from the “Solesides” compilation or a sprinkling of cuts from their mishmash of exclusive recordings and radio freestyles known as “The Album,” but nothing was begging to be used like “Callin’ Out,” which wound up in both a Diet Coke commercial starring Adrien Brody and an episode of HBO’s “Entourage.”

“As I got older, I started to realize that the criteria for me for what a good record is just started to change,” he says. “Being the best rapper doesn’t necessarily mean that you write the best songs. I don’t want to be a watered-down MC, you know, and just write catchy songs that hopefully everybody’s going to like. I still want to be a good rapper.”

In a genre where credibility is often more important than talent, it’s a fine line. But as the thousands of Australian fans heard gleefully screaming on the record attest to, he’s found a way to make that connection.

“Nothing surpasses that feeling. You know, when you start with an idea in your head, it’s just air,” he says. “And then, through hard work and being in the studio, experience, writing, rewriting, all that kind of stuff, you come up with something, you know, that connects with hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, know what I mean? That’s the whole point for me.”

weekend@latimes.com

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Lyrics Born and Cut Chemist

With Pigeon John

Where: El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 tonight

Price: $19

Info: (323) 936-6400, www.theelrey.com