POP REVIEWS : Tommy Boy Rap Revue: Label It Bouncy

In rap music, as with old R&B;, labels as well as artists become hot. Just as there was a Motown sound and a Philadelphia International sound, there are a Def Jam sound (hard and suburban), a Sugar Hill sound (flowing disco) and a Ruthless sound (stuff with machine guns in it).

Tommy Boy Records, which first became prominent with Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” in the early ‘80s, has lately become hot again, with hard-edged, slightly bawdy, compulsively danceable, R&B-based; hip-hop from such rappers as Digital Underground, Naughty by Nature, De La Soul, Stetsasonic and Queen Latifah, candy to the vast audience of hip-hop fans whose taste falls somewhere between the saccharine inanities of Hammer and the gangsta vulgarisms of N.W.A.

On Wednesday, the Tommy Boy revue--Digital Underground, Queen Latifah and Naughty by Nature--came to a packed and steamy Palladium, and though the package wasn’t exactly as incandescent as the T.A.M.I. Show, it was an entertaining night of solid, bouncy rap.

Though Los Angeles is now the white-hot center of the rap universe, there still seems to be a general drought of local rap shows, and many of the big national rap tours have lately been bypassing L.A. altogether.

Headliners Digital Underground, who took the stage after a minor dance-floor scuffle that shook up the crowd, put on a small-scale P-Funk-style revue, complete with a funky game of “Who’s That Rapper,” a startling version of their hit “Kiss You Back,” and a host of bass lines so low that only dogs could have heard them.

At their best, in “Sons of the P,” the group was almost hallucinatory, with hypnotic beats and the incantatory quality of the best P-Funk. Lead rapper Shock G’s dusky, flexible tenor is equally adept at serious raps and--in Shock’s role as his pickle-nosed alter-ego Humpty Hump--endearing, clownish jive.

But although Digital Underground has put out three wonderful records in the last couple of years, and is nearly as innovative within its hermetic R&B;/rap universe as Public Enemy is inits own, Wednesday’s performance seemed perfunctory, without the spark of collaboration withthe audience that marks the best rap.

Naughty by Nature, the New York rap crew that scored a No. 1 hit last year with its song “O.P.P.,” an infectious ode to adultery, preceded DU and came off as a raw, street-level posse, leavening its set with more profanity than you’d hear anywhere outside an Ice Cube album and decking the stage with “dancers” who slouched to the beat.

The set sounded distorted, like something coming from a loud upstairs party at 3:30 in the morning, but the energy--especially on an extremely extended version of their hit--was contagious.

Queen Latifah, a contender for last year’s most-overhyped-rapper title--sometimes it seemed as if she was better at selling her vision to magazine editors than to the record-buying public--turned in a well-paced and distinctive set of her patented political rap.

Her contralto rapping voice was clear and appealing; her enunciation was aggressive and precise, but without the limited emotional register those qualities often engender; her presence was commanding and sure.

Plus, she rocked the place--she is a fine rapper, but an even better emcee.

The New York-based Latifah, who has lately eschewed her trademark Afrikan-queen gear for the sort of dress-for-success power smocks that Oprah Winfrey likes to wear, performed with a live drummer. Stripped down to the basics of rhythm and rhyme, occasionally punctuated with a beat or a swoop from her deejay, the sound conquered even the muddy acoustics of the Palladium.