Xzibit, Master P, guests
Mon Dec 16, Showbox, $20 adv/$25 dos

Two distinct parts define L.A.'s hiphop scene: the underground (with its cafe values: peace, creativity, dedication to the art form, and weed) and the gangsta rap (with its ghetto values: cheap booze, easy women, relaxed motor vehicles, guns, and weed). The gangsta rap scene in L.A. should not be confused with the one in New York, which mixes L.A.'s "street knowledge" with febrile mafia fantasies. New York's Nas, Mobb Deep, and, more recently, Murder Inc. blend real black gang activity with images and codes from mob movies like Scarface and the Godfather trilogy. With the exception of Dr. Dre's brief association with the failed hiphop conglomerate the Firm, L.A.'s gangsterism has been about reality--in fact, too much reality. And it is precisely this gangsta realism that the L.A. underground initially reacted against.

Though the underground is political (Freestyle Fellowship, Usual Suspects), and sex, weed, and booze are frequently celebrated there (Quasimoto, Tha Alkaholiks), its primary preoccupation has been the art of hiphop itself--mic skillz and crate digging. Gangstas don't brag about their rap skillz; it's almost too feminine to claim that you are intelligent, or care about old jazz and soul records. Gangstas keep it real and worry about practical things, like making fast money, avoiding crooked cops, sleeping with other niggaz's hos, and gunning down niggaz who have betrayed them.

Originally from Detroit, Xzibit got his start with the father of the L.A. underground, King Tee, who is now almost entirely forgotten. During his brief peak in the late '80s, King Tee had two or three street hits; he frequently performed with the then-emerging Ice Cube, and introduced to the world the now-famous Alkaholiks and the now-forgotten Mad Kap. Xzibit was loosely connected with Mad Kap (who unsuccessfully blended hiphop with jazz sounds and instruments), and closely connected with Tha Alkaholiks (who, like the Pharcyde, successfully combined comedy with innovative hiphop). Tha Alkaholiks (now called the Tha Liks) gave Xzibit his first major underground appearance on Coast II Coast (1995), and also formed with him and King Tee the intoxicated Likwit Crew.

Xzibit's first (and best) CD, At the Speed of Life (1996), was produced by Tha Alkaholiks' DJ, E-Swift, and saturated with classic underground themes: per- fecting rhymes, battling and destroying weak MCs, rejecting the "bling-bling" values of rap celebrity, and so on. The track that launched Xzibit was "Paparazzi," which some (including myself) believe is one of the greatest rap songs ever made. It criticizes MCs who have abandoned "the rap game" for "the money and the fame," and impressively samples a classical piece of music, Faure's divine "Pavane," instead of the standard Zapp or P-Funk. At the Speed of Life also introduced to the underground the racist but enormously gifted rapper Ras Kass, whose once-promising career has now fizzled somewhat after two rather disappointing CDs.

Xzibit's second release, 40 Dayz & 40 Nightz (1998), reemphasized the importance of innovation in hiphop music, improving rhyme skills, and being committed to the rap game. Somewhere along the line, the godfather of gangsta rap, Dr. Dre, took an interest in Xzibit, and at the end of the 20th century Xzibit defected from the underground and went pop.

His first major gangsta appearance was on Snoop Dogg's 1999 pounding playa's paradise "Bitch Please." Soon afterward, he released Restless (2000), a mildly interesting blend of his early underground themes and newly adopted gangsta codes, with competent production work from a variety of superproducers that included Dr. Dre, Eminem, and Erick Sermon. However, Xzibit's most recent gangsta-related effort--Man vs Machine (2002), which again has a variety of superproducers (the most surprising of whom is DJ Premier)--is not interesting at all. The CD is a clump of confused attempts to establish pop or dance hits, with one track, "Heart of Man," going so far as to sample the "catchy" '80s pop tune "Africa" by Toto. As for the frankly pornographic "Choke Me, Spank Me (Pull My Hair)," I have absolutely nothing to say.

Despite the disappointing Man vs Machine--not one track on the CD explains why it has that Kraftwerk-like title--"X to the motherfucking Z" deserves props for helping to form and define the most vibrant hiphop scene today, the L.A. underground.