Wyclef Jean ignites hip-hop at the Bowl

Saving what had threatened to be a stay-in-the-seats night at the Hollywood Bowl, hip-hop’s Haitian ambassador Wyclef Jean deftly tore open the slick surface of popular rap to deliver an irrepressible performance tapping storytelling skills, intelligent freestyling and deep roots in Caribbean and R&B; music. By the end of his too-short set, he had transformed the polite crowd to hip-hop carnival revelers, with many stripping off their shirts and whirling them overhead.

Jean’s set made sense of the purposely eclectic lineup of “World Hip-Hop,” part of KCRW-FM’s World Festival series. Though ostensibly a musical statement about how both world beat and hip-hop have found global interpretation, or how hip-hop now appears in such an array of languages it has become the new world music, the lineup at first seemed a bit like a lesson in cultural studies.

The dual MCs of Control Machete, a Latin hip-hop act from Monterrey, Mexico, channeled the sharp attack of L.A.’s Cypress Hill on their last two songs, singing predominantly in Spanish. Master turntablist Kid Koala delivered a series of vinyl mix routines -- the basic building blocks of hip-hop -- but the silken, rolling Chimurenga style Afropop of exiled Zimbabwean singer Thomas Mapfumo seemed a broad diversion from hip-hop, with its chanting, melodic vocals and emphasis on instrumental groove.

Jean made it clear that hip-hop is all these things and more. The Fugees alumnus freestyled in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, German and what he claimed was “North Korean” over Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry.” Several times, he wove in clever digs at President Bush. After a Fugees flashback and an inspired guitar solo, he really hit his stride with the bitterly satirical ditty “If I Was the President,” which morphed into Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

No greatest-hits show, Jean’s was an engaged and charismatic stretch that reeled all the way out with a long samba-line stroll through the shirt-waving crowd, and back to close with Marley’s “Redemption Song.” This was world music, but in his hands, the message-ready medium of hip-hop may say more -- and more smartly -- than world beat ever did.