Somewhere beyond the carnival games and the sea of livestock trailers, there is a different side of the New York State Fair. Inside this small, distant bubble, throngs of teenagers sway to the throbbing rhythm of Busta Rhymes humping a speaker.

He and his Flipmode Squad rocked the Grandstand in the closing hours of Sunday night, sandwiched between lesser performances by Petey Pablo and Twista. This show, the year’s last big Wegmans Grandstand fare, has been defined and plagued by scheduling problems.

Rhymes replaced the original headliner, LL Cool J, who bailed weeks ago. Showtime was pushed back an hour because Hurricane Frances delayed Petey Pablo’s arrival, and the three sets were jumbled, presumably so Rhymes could leave Syracuse on schedule. There’s a reason most concerts save the best for last: by the time Twista appeared on stage for his abbreviated set, much of the crowd had vacated with Busta.

But the headliner delivered an explosive and energized performance that more than made up for the oddity of its timing. The bleachers that housed most of the audience shook and shuddered under the weight of thousands of fans jumping, grinding and jogging in unison as Rhymes rolled through his 13-year catalog of hardcore rap hits.

Rhymes and his Flipmode sidekick laced the songs with drawn-out, overacted segues about smoking pot and seducing women with Barry White music. Even while he praised himself for not cursing on stage – ‘There’s kids here’ – he embarked on a long diatribe arguing that he shouldn’t be blamed for drug use among his young fans, and that parents should take more responsibility for their children’s actions. Then he urged everyone to light up.

In what served as his set’s finale, Rhymes requested the audience ‘raise a glass’ and toast with him. His salute: ‘Not one of us is voting for that dickhead George Bush.’ Cheers erupted from the crowd, but a large portion of the audience probably wasn’t old enough to vote at all. Rhymes followed his vulgar but poignant political statement with a few more minutes of outcry about the state of the Union, and he made his triumphant exit just as his fans’ toasting arms were getting tired.

Twista and his entourage took the stage a few minutes later, and a cool breeze descended on what was once a sweltering, electrified Grandstand crowd. The group barreled through a series of rap covers and his short string of hits, but much of the crowd seemed torn between sitting down and going home. As the set progressed, the audience’s steady departure revealed the tangle of white plastic chairs that littered the floor, their disarray a result of the power and chaos behind Busta’s performance.

Petey Pablo delivered a better set, and not just because the audience was still waiting with bated breath for Rhymes. The rapper’s breakthrough hit, ‘Raise Up,’ initiated a whirlwind of spinning shirts and naked torsos in the crowd, and he finished his half-hour performance by lining up 30 eager female fans for an onstage party. The reward for their dance moves? A trip backstage, for all of them.

Published on September 6, 2004 at 12:00 pm