By Chris Varias
Enquirer contributor

If you've seen one Insane Clown Posse show at Bogart's, you've seen all five, or all 10. Or all 100, about how many times it seems like the shock-rap crew have checked into the club the last few years.

The performance doesn't change - same recorded music, same songs of violent fantasy and of vitriol, epitomized by the all-encompassing "(Expletive) the World," which aims its venom at, among others, MTV and music critics, pre-schoolers, Dionne Warwick and Insane Clown Posse themselves.

So the Detroit duo offered no surprises during its hour-long headline set at sold-out Bogart's Saturday night, but this was the best show they've ever played in Cincinnati, if you call rapping over a tape "playing."

What made it the best one yet had nothing to do with the ICP performance and everything to do with the rest of the bill. Where Posse principals Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope in the past filled the bill with ICP copycat acts, this time, what they're calling the Wicked Wonka tour, they brought along an eclectic mix of three rap acts - sing-songy Cleveland group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, hip-hop-and-punk blenders Kottonmouth Kings, and stylish gangsta rapper Tech N9ne. Any one of the acts could have stolen the show, and the Kottonmouth Kings just about did. Who knows where this may lead? At this rate, we're keeping our fingers crossed for an eventual ICP undercard of the Geto Boys, Digital Underground and Roxanne Shante.

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the quartet that immediately preceded ICP, have enjoyed the most mainstream success of any act on the bill, but theirs was the most inconsistent set. It included a cover of N.W.A.'s "(Expletive) the Police" and the recorded rap of N.W.A. member and Bone Thugs mentor Eazy-E on "Foe tha Love of $."

Easy died in 1995, and there's the sense Bone Thugs' best days date back to the mid ë90s. Other than 1994's "Foe tha Love of $," the only interesting song they played was 1995's welfare song of praise "1st of tha Month."

Kottonmouth Kings' high-energy set was powered by a live drummer, who negotiated the shifts in rhythm from slow-grind hip-hop to breakaway punk and back. Meanwhile, a ragtag crew of rappers covered many angles of drug culture in songs like "4-2-0," "Old (So High)," and "Zero Tolerance."