Bone Thugs--N-Harmony turn cliches into riches

Gangsta cliches don’t ever die -- they multiply. And that’s true for many of the words of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, accented with the usual sounds of gunfire and tough talk on the thug life. But the Cleveland rappers have always risen far above the crowd with a rich musical sensibility that matches hard-core rhymes with street-corner harmonies.

That musical sophistication was on display at the group’s concert Wednesday at the House of Blues, where Bone Thugs performed a show heavy with tunes from the new album, “Thug World Order,” out next week. The sound on stage was as crisp and sophisticated as the album, with sweet, lush melodies that owed as much to an animated vocal style as to astute sampling in the studio.

Bone Thugs were early explorers of the same territory that their contemporaries in OutKast have ridden to platinum sales and critical acclaim. Drawing as deeply on classic soul as on hard-core rap, the musical choices never sound unnatural or forced, even when sampling the light ‘80s pop of Phil Collins.

Amid the odes to weed and their hometown, the rappers also name-dropped the late Ruthless Records impresario and N.W.A member Eazy-E, who briefly appears posthumously on the new album. Eazy can be heard claiming, “Killings, robbery, murder, thievin’ ... everything you hear on our records is true.”

By the end of the night, the core group was performing “Money, Money” (“I don’t want to be broke no more!”) while sharing the House of Blues stage with more than 25 supporters standing behind them, not doing much of anything, as Bone Thugs turned cliches into music.