Krushadelic, Blake's, Feb. 4

LOCAL LIVE

It seemed as if headliner Krushadelic was gonna be in for a hard time after about half the audience split an hour before he was due to hit the bandstand at Blake's. The largely Caucasian contingent of the crowd had come to see Purpose, a lanky pale-face from Concord who was one of a half dozen acts Krush had hired for the three-and-a-half-hour showcase of underground East Bay hip-hop talent.

The dance floor was packed while Purpose and his five-man multiracial posse, appropriately billed as Melting Pot, served up a high-energy set of tunes from It Is What It Is, the 30-year-old MC's recent self-released debut. "It is what it is / It ain't what it isn't / Give a fuck about what you did / And hear about shit you didn't," Purpose rapped over a recorded track heavy on slap bass and a repetitive drumbeat as members of his crew interjected percussive vocal responses. "Feel my breeze as I blow right by you / From the Bay on my way to the Bayou / Why you?" he asked on another catchy original tune, this one with a menacing, low-register synthesizer billowing around the midtempo groove. The energy level reached a fever pitch during a number titled "Lung Capacity II," its rapid-fire beat sampled from a Gwen Stefani song. The crew and the crowd were in constant motion, the tall Purpose taking turns at the mic with Scholar, a pint-sized Melting Pot member who ran though the audience, wiggling his knees and thrusting his pelvis at distaff dancers when he wasn't spitting tongue-twisting lines.

A procession of low-key MCs preceded and followed Purpose, most rapping over their own voices on recorded tracks that sported monotonous drum loops and simple bass lines. But Krushadelic wasted no time getting the party restarted a little past midnight. At age 33, the West Oakland MC (né Sean Cotton) is a 16-year vet of the hip-hop biz, with 17 recordings under his belt, some as half of the duo Underground Rebellion. His professionalism was evident from the onset - from the swagger of his and crew members Jullie-D's, Nitty's, and Shakemaster's movements to the clear enunciation of his delivery and the musical sophistication of his backing tracks. Krush featured mostly tunes from his current, self-released CD, Hyph-A-Del, including the irresistible "Like Whutter." "Let me see you shake your thing like whutter / Let me spread the margarine like butter," he intoned over a synthesized snake-charger riff. Krush and his men at times dispensed with lyrics, substituting nonsense syllables such as ooh ah, ooh ooh ah that they worked in rhythmically inventive unison over throbbing grooves. Separation between the performers and the audience seemed to vanish as Shakemaster moved between the bandstand and dance floor. With Purpose's fans long gone, the crowd was now predominantly African American. Purpose himself stuck around to witness Krush's incisive rhymes and potent rhythms, which served to drive the remaining dancers to the heights of Hyph-A-Del-irium. (Lee Hildebrand)