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.