The-Dream's Lewd 'Tude Belies His Body of Work

As a hip-hop singer, Terius Nash is a terrific hitmaker-for-hire.

Recording and performing as The-Dream, Nash specializes in lyrically conventional R&B songs in which sex serves as the central subject matter -- all in the service of a prurient stage persona, which was on full display Thursday night at DAR Constitution Hall.

His twitchy, Technicolor soundscapes tend to be crammed with so many interesting musical ideas (complex chords, accelerating rhythms, arty found sounds) that he has been nominated as R&B's answer to Radiohead. But onstage and on his albums (the latest is "Love vs. Money"), he appears to be much more interested in getting in touch with his inner-Pretty Ricky as he scratches his licentious itch to tedious effect.

On Thursday, The-Dream also scratched -- and squeezed -- his unmentionables while taking off on a vocal run during the bawdy "Purple Kisses." Later, in a supine position, he unleashed a series of moans in his pliant, featherweight falsetto on "Falsetto" -- the point of which was that he can totally make his partner sing.

"Nasty [expletive] song," The-Dream observed, though he might have been talking about any number of his salacious offerings.

Both vocally and lyrically, he's like the second coming of R. Kelly, only without the bizarre narratives about midgets and closets. It's orgiastic if thematically unoriginal stuff, which is disappointing given the sonic creativity of the songs ("Walkin' on the Moon" was like an intergalactic pocket symphony in concert), not to mention what immediately preceded The-Dream's set: A mini-mix featuring snippets of some of the biggest and brightest hits he and his collaborator, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, have created for other artists.

Chief among them was "Umbrella," the monster Rihanna smash that features the most indelible hook in post-millennial pop. You know, the one in which Rihanna turns the word "umbrella" into its own echo effect, singing "ella-ella ehh-ehh."

Nash wrote that part (he's the lyrics-and-vocal-melody guy; Stewart specializes in beats and music), and then repeated the trick on J. Holiday's simmering slow jam "Bed," as well as some of the songs on his own 2007 debut, "Love/Hate." They included: "Shawty Is da [Expletive]," on which The-Dream sings about a long list of lovely ladies over an intoxicating two-chord keyboard loop. That song was one of the standouts here, perhaps because it came early enough in the set that the idea still seemed relatively fresh.

Nash and Stewart are hardly one-trick ponies, though: Their most recent pop masterstroke was Beyoncé's explosive, inventive smash, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," a multi-layered delight whose twitchy beat, monster synth stabs and mysterious, ascending whistle-horn-thingy sounded bold and original and helped add up to 2008's best pop single. The song also happened to feature the year's most surprising contraction: "Shouldaputa."

Perhaps because he's not beholden to the constraints of his persona, The-Dream's best work seems to come when he's working behind the scenes. When he steps out front, though, he's just another tongue-wagging face in the crowd of oversexed R&B singers.