Oddisee and Good Compny remain joyous at Shank Hall show

A rapper doesn’t need a band to put on a stellar live show.

However.

If that rapper is Oddisee, as indeed he was Friday night at Shank Hall, and if he’s got a band like Good Compny, as indeed he had, then it’s hard to imagine why any spectator would want him to put on a stellar live show, as indeed he did, without that band.

Not that the man otherwise known as Amir Mohamed couldn’t achieve a high-quality performance with just a mic and a drum machine: possessing diction that stays true at motormouth or marijuana speed and lyrics that offer potent insights as if they were pennies, he might not even need the drum machine.

However.

Good Compny’s musicians lack a key vowel in their band name, but they lack nothing that’s necessary for the meshing of hip-hop with funk, rock and jazz.

Dennis Turner wielded a six-string bass as if synthesizing Bootsy Collins, Jaco Pastorius and the Who’s John “Thunderfingers” Entwistle. Drummer John Laine kept the rhythms from lapsing into merely mechanistic beats. And keyboardist Ralph Real laid down the organ sound as if pumping a squeezebox.

Then there was Olivier St. Louis, a guitarist capable of slipping in a Hendrixian lick and making it belong, plus a singer and showman with enough energy that the audience wouldn’t have minded if he’d  extended Good Compny’s opening set.

However.

Earlier this year, Oddisee released “The Iceberg,” an album that solidifies his status and skills and, moreover, proves that one kind of rap music — the kind that is a medium for any human subject, small or significant — is not as close to death as one might’ve thought.

Originally recorded with several Good Compny members, songs from “The Iceberg” came out during Friday night’s show, the 50th show of the current tour, in noticeably different forms.

The simmering feints of “Hold It Back” turned into punches via Laine’s sticks; the stride of “Rights & Wrongs” became longer and more elastic; and the pointed messages of “Like Really” turned into chants from a well-goaded crowd and laments in the beautiful chorus.

Highest among the highlights might have been “Want to Be,” featuring a pop hook so tenacious and a groove so bodacious the song could’ve made Pharrell Williams wish he’d put more verbal substance into “Happy.”

There were few self-indulgent moments except, as when Oddisee fiddled with buttons on DJ Unown’s sampler, the purpose was momentary amusement. The rapper and his band kept things tight and powerfully joyous.

No however about that.