Age distorts everything. It can be the crumbling decay of an empire or the steady maturation of a bottle of wine. But in the world of popular music, it is a total wild card. Bob Dylan can wake up one day and decide to hawk women's underwear. Or Nick Cave will put out the second best album of his career past the half-century mark. Who knows?

Yesterday Slick Rick, aka Rick the Ruler, headlined the opening of Philly's Popped! Festival at The Trocadero. As advertised, Rick was "appearing with a live band." I will not duplicate the exclamation mark that followed most mentions of this "live band," as it is a part of punctuation I find uncomfortable, even when following the name of a festival. What to expect? Had MC Ricky D gone the way of Flavor Flav? Or was this forty three year old man with his checkered legal past reinventing himself like contemporary KRS-One, a sort of elder statesman of hip hop?

The great unspoken truth about hip hop as a concert (meaning in a large venue) is that its usually a pretty hit or miss affair. MCs rule a crowd with charisma, and even the solid ones can flub in a big room, with no sense of intimacy. Was Rick's "live band" an attempt to thwart the rap concert trap? Or even just a cheap appeal to the city that spawned The Roots? The answer ended up taking forever, in truly dramatic fashion.

Opening DJs White Ts and White Belts had the nearly impossible task of keeping the scene lively. The all-ages show's only bar was in an isolated balcony, thus effectively completely devastating any semblance of a dance-floor. As the adults went upstairs to play, these brave kids put their best foot forward, and I applaud their exuberance. But it wasn't enough to make me stay. Trying to kill an hour, I took a short walk a few blocks north of Vine to a houseparty where I caught half a set of the ridiculously young Bruce Lucy. Rumor had it that the band's guitar player was sixteen. She rocked. And their hilariously adolescent myspace page rocks too. These kids have wide eyes and big dreams and they are gonna be huge. With no further dramatic contrast needed, I headed back to wait with the rest of the slowly filling in dancefloor for the ailing apparition that was Slick Rick.

OK, he wasn't that bad. Actually, he totally delivered. Rick stood tall last night as a competent MC, even if his performance only existed in the shadow of former glories. Who can stand up to Slick Rick at his prime, after all? The band was competent too, but as none of the six backup players looked much older than Bruce Lucy, they did sort of make the master seem that much more ancient. And I could have done without the sax solos.

Its a hard world, people. We get older. Some of us get senile. What are you gonna do? If you didn't see Rick in '88, its too late now. But we can still pay tribute to the man that was, twenty years later, and maybe help pay for his kids' braces. Or an eye patch. Or another giant gold medallion. He needs more.