By Chris Varias
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The most successful rap group to emerge from the state of Ohio headlined the show at Bogart's Wednesday night. But, counting the number of painted faces in the room, the opening act from Detroit drew the sellout crowd.

Twiztid, a rap duo molded in the image of their friends Insane Clown Posse, drew more than half the crowd. The giveaway was the grease paint - the markings of a Juggalo, which is the name given to an Insane Clown Posse fan.

Twiztid did 45 minutes to prerecorded music. Theirs was an equal-opportunity brand of gratuitous misanthropy. "I hate everyone!" was one of the choruses that comes to mind.

Meanwhile, Cleveland's Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, the "stars" of the night, won over most Twiztid fans, although there was the occasional chant of "I-C-P, I-C-P," even though ICP was present only in spirit.

It has been almost 10 years since Bone Thugs-n-Harmony broke onto the scene with what at the time seemed like a revolutionary mix of ballad tempos and double-time rapping, sort of a melodic hip-hop equivalent to auction calling.

In a show lasting just under an hour, the four-man crew mixed songs celebrating the joys of pot and welfare checks with criminal tales from the streets that seemed more dramatic than cautionary.

Perhaps the greatest-ever song about government relief, "1st of tha Month," featured the whispery command to "wake up, wake up, get up, get up" and fetch the welfare check, which was earmarked for, among other things, "rollin' blunts and sippin' on 40 ounces."

Bone Thugs carried the theme further in "Foe tha Love of $." Like the entire performance, the music was pre-recorded, so the song featured the original guest vocal spot of former N.W.A. rapper Eazy-E, who died in 1995.

These early hits sounded fresh when the group was young, but eight or nine years later the formula comes off as gimmicky. Judging by the material they performed from their latest album New Thug Order, Bone Thugs are trying to steer away from the old formula, but they're not breaking new ground anymore, either.

They've seemed to have traded ballad for bounce, and the results were at times exciting, like on "Home," which sampled Phil Collins' "Take Me Home" in a altogether crowd-rocking way.

E-mail cvarias@enquirer.com