Many musical sides of MC Lupe Fiasco

Lupe Fiasco is quite the anomaly in present-day hip-hop. The lyricist is as concerned with subtleties and smart humor as he is with societal concerns and politics. His music is as underground as it is contagiously mainstream.

And when he isn't busy with philanthropic enterprises and appearances, Fiasco fights his record label and fronts a tech-punk band, Japanese Cartoon, under his real name, Wasalu Muhammad Jaco.

A black-clad Fiasco showed all those sides on a chilly Saturday night at the Mann. With a forceful live band behind him, the electro-punk side was most prominent on the seesawing "Words I Never Said," as Fiasco dissed Limbaugh for being a racist and Obama for not speaking up during the bombing of the Gaza Strip.

"That's why I ain't vote for him . . . I'm a part of the problem," rapped Fiasco in a slippery baritone. While "I Don't Wanna Care Right Now" raged on in hard rock ("Feeling out of place like PETA at a fur store"), tunes such as "Beautiful Lasers" and "Scream" benefited from a piano-plinking Coldplay-ish ambience with an intuitive violinist.

Yet have no doubt: Fiasco's calling card - his primary love - is hip-hop.

As prominent background vocalists made strange gospel howls behind Fiasco, the MC leaped through the coolly grooving "Hip-Hop Saved My Life," and the synth-phonic "All Black Everything."

Bouncing across the stage like a superball, he sailed through the epic "Superstar" and the watery "Touch the Sky," his duet with Kanye West.

But just because he found sweet melody didn't mean that Fiasco disregarded what was in his heart and on his mind.

Fiasco held up a Palestinian flag showing his support for the U.N.'s recognition of Palestine as a state and filled the contagious "The Show Goes On" with hard truths such as: "Have you ever had the feeling that you was being had? . . . They treat you like a slave / put chains all on your soul."

It was powerful stuff, gorgeously executed.