There’s nothing worse than a live rapper posturing around the stage, his army of “hype-men” mimicking every line, backed by nothing more than a set of turntables. It is a plain fact that, without the inherent intensity and drama of live instruments, many rap concerts come off as sterile, tedious replicas of superior recorded performances.

So how does a socially and artistically conscious hip-hop artist pump life into this monotonous formula? If you’re Mos Def, you form a live band made up of black rock ‘n’ roll legends: the Living Colour rhythm section of Will Calhoun and Doug Wimbish, Parliament/Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell and Bad Brains guitarist Dr. Know. Then you name this group after the world’s first black heavyweight boxing champion and proceed to take hip-hop to another level.

The eclectic set consisted of Roots-style instrumental hip-hop versions of songs from Mos Def’s Black On Both Sides album, mid-tempo rockers like the new “Ghetto,” and a satirical and biting parody of the original Batman theme, dubbed “Black Man.” The latter built up to a stunning climax in which Mos Def repeatedly pleaded, “It’s just a wallet,” in reference to the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was killed by New York cops in 1999.

One of the few drawbacks of the concert was the restrained use of the band’s supporting players, who were limited to repetitive hip-hop arrangements for most of the show. It wasn’t until Mos Def left the stage that drummer Calhoun and bassist Wimbish were able to shine, revisiting their groundbreaking Living Colour material and delivering some superhuman solos during a concluding jam.

The focus of this Project was clearly on the front man, Mos Def, a leader among the current generation of socially meaningful black musicians. The Black Jack Johnson Project succeeds in dismantling the cultural preconceptions that confine contemporary African-American music. On the punk-ish “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Mos Def screamed, “Elvis Presley ain’t got no soul /Chuck Berry is rock and roll /You may dig on the Rolling Stones/But they ain’t come up with that style on they own.”

In 2002, when most hip-hop artists wallow in clich