
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 28, 1994                   TAG: 9404280192
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT GIVES ITS AUDIENCE MORE THAN RAP

Whether you like rap music or hate it, when it's performed with the energy and fun and celebration that Arrested Development brought to Radford University's Dedmon Center on Tuesday night, you can't deny that it is infectious.

Visually, Arrested Development just doesn't stop. With its lead rappers Speech and Headliner, its four dancer/singers and five other group members, the troupe that bills itself as "musical vagabonds of the South" gives you something to watch.

Tuesday night, the stage was like a beehive of activity, a funky free-for-all of dancing and jumping and grooving that was feel-good and wild. It even had a stage guru, 62-year-old Baba Oje, whose main job was to boogie along to the group's rhythms.

He also set the tone for the celebration, greeting the dismal Dedmon Center audience of maybe 500 people with a simple call to action: "Put up your two fingers if you believe in peace, everlasting peace."

The motion and the beat never let up after that.

At one point, Headliner strolled into the crowd and rapped from the audience, while the rest of the group played on. Many people, so caught up in the beat themselves, didn't notice. Of course, it wasn't hard to lose him, either, with so much else going on.

Musically, Arrested Development also bills itself as "Southern-fried funksters." The term applies in the very best sense. The group played a contagious mix of hip-hop and modern funk that went beyond standard rap. The soulful singing of singer/dancers Toni and Nadirah Ali particularly set the show apart.

Among the songs included in its hour-long performance were: "Tennessee," "Fishin' 4 Religion," "People Everyday," "Revolution," and a new number, "Ease My Mind," among others. Several times, the group and the audience broke into call-and-response.

It was lively for sure, and the mostly empty hall left plenty of room for shaking. Like the painted sign above the stage read: Life Music. And like Speech cried in concluding the show: "Power to the people!"

Two acts opened Tuesday's show: rapper Nefertiti and spoken word performer Reg. E. Gaines. Neither, however, matched Arrested Development's life music vibe - or came very close. Nefertiti was just standard-issue rap, nothing unique, and Reg. E. Gaines offered only a one-note monologue drone.

by CNB