RazzyBlog

"Ms Watkin said: "I couldn't believe it. The bill read 'fish cakes', which one of us had for a starter, and it was written right above it - absolutely disgusting language."

"We actually booked the table for 8 o' clock in the evening, by the time they had taken our order it was quarter to nine and we didn't actually receive our food until quarter past 10."

She added: "I'd like a written apology from the restaurant and I'd also like some compensation.

"I think that the way that we've been spoken to is absolutely outrageous."

Radio D.J.’s were shouting themselves hoarse in the parking lot, crowing about one of the biggest concerts this town has ever seen. Cars were crawling down Veterans Parkway, trunk speakers abuzz. The local clergy were not amused.

Such was the scene when R. Kelly came to the Columbus Civic Center, here on the western edge of Georgia, across the Chattahoochee River from Alabama. Some concerts might seem anticlimactic after a buildup like that, but an R. Kelly concert consists of almost nothing but climax, one way and another. And for more than two hours he was thrilling, hilarious and downright mystifying, often all at once.

During an extended version of “Bump ’n’ Grind,” an old slow jam, he sang one of his most famous lines — “Seems like you’re ready to go all the way” — and then paused, claiming that people backstage were asking him to keep things tame. This inspired a memorable digression, a fanfare for the common ticketholder.

Waxing operatic, he sang: “We paid. To see. You go. All the. Way!” Then he got specific: “Hair done! Nails done! Toes done! Car washed!” He paused, steeling himself, then roared: “Six! Hun! Dred! Dollar! Weave!” Then he issued a warning, using his own first name to amplify the threat: “Somebody say: ‘Robert. If you. Don’t go. All. The way. We want. Our money. Back!’”

On the day of the concert here, the local newspaper The Ledger-Enquirer printed a skeptical front-page article that portrayed the concert as controversial. The article seemed to endorse the view of one detractor, the Rev. Johnny Flakes III, an assistant pastor at the Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church here, saying of the pastor, “He opposes the overall derogatory message that will be inherent in many songs performed at tonight’s concert.”

This low hum of outrage scarcely hurts Mr. Kelly; it makes his whimsical sex songs seem all the more daring, while making his tributes to the fans seem all the more heartfelt.

We are barely a year removed from Mr. Kelly’s last traveling show, which he called “Mr. Show Biz Presents: The Light It Up Tour.” While that production suggested that Mr. Kelly was gravitating further toward musical comedy, this one is more scrambled, more bewildering, and the concert became weirder as it went on.

Singing (when it counted) and lip-synching (when it didn’t), he barreled through the old hits and really came alive during the parts that felt like ad-libs, even if they were rehearsed. He performed “Real Talk,” an angry musical monologue, with a memorable prop: a cellphone. And he turned “Your Body’s Calling” into a quiet, moving tribute to his own history, murmuring, “Somebody’s still calling me, after 17 years, damn.” When he used a word that Pastor Flakes probably disapproves of, he paused to ask if he should censor himself, then evidently decided not to, embarking on a loopy but elegant one-word solo.

He’s a 17-year-old rapper, producer and Internet entrepreneur from Atlanta, known officially as Soulja Boy Tell’em, though everyone calls him just plain Soulja Boy. And his breakthrough hit, “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” just might be the most viral song of the decade. Long before it was a No. 1 hit, firmly lodged in pop-radio playlists, it was an underground phenomenon, streaming from countless Web sites, through the shoddy speakers of countless PCs.

On YouTube.com, you can watch hundreds of so-they-think-they-can-dancers perfect and modify the moves that go with it. (Apparently it helps to have been born in the 1990s.) And on imeem.com, you can shuffle through dozens of cover versions: “Crank Dat (SpiderPig)” pays tribute to “The Simpsons Movie”; “Crank Dat Soulja Boy” (Chipmunks remix) proves that sped-up voices are still funny; “Crank Dat (Folger Boy)” gives the song a brilliantly unnecessary coffee-themed makeover.

And what does any of that have to do with Soulja Boy’s debut album, “Souljaboytellem.com”? Absolutely nothing. The CD gathers about a dozen typically infectious tracks, including “Report Card” (in which a straight-F student quotes the rapper Rich Boy, demanding that his teacher “Throw some D’s” on it), “Sidekick” (which doesn’t seem to have been commissioned by T-Mobile) and “Booty Meat” (a celebration of women’s trousers and their contents).

His simple, ebullient rhymes still sound great over those defiantly unfussy beats; sometimes a few notes and a fake kick drum are all you need. And in his rowdy but curse-free lyrics (Interscope isn’t releasing an explicit-lyrics version), you can hear an appealing vision of youth culture at its youthiest. Although Soulja Boy is just about guaranteed to irritate hip-hop purists, he captures the same playful, often silly energy that drove the genre in its early years.

There’s just one problem: What, exactly, are you supposed to do with this shiny round thing? Play it? All the way through? Even for a fan, 48 minutes is a lot of Soulja Boy. And this album is missing much of what first made him a star: the home-grown dance-offs, the cover versions, the goofy videos of the young star himself with his name Wite-Outed onto the lenses of his sunglasses. “I got a new dance for y’all,” he declares, at the beginning of “Let Me Get ’Em,” but if you’d like to see it, go online — this CD won’t be any help. Good news for Soulja Boy, but not for Interscope: He makes the album-driven music industry seem that much more obsolete. KELEFA SANNEH