The Hip Hop Live! Tour, which hit the Nokia Theatre in Times Square Friday night, opened with a half dozen songs from the Rhythm Roots Allstars, a Latin funk band that was in for a long night of backing the tour’s rappers.

I won’t lie: While everyone else was buzzing about the tour’s big names, I was there for Brother Ali. I’m a Minneapolis transplant, and it had been a long time since I’d seen anybody from the Rhymesayers collective. Ali’s The Undisputed Truth is one of my favorite albums of the year, thanks in part to the production by Ant (better known as Slug’s producer in Atmosphere), and I was curious to hear how the band playing the fiery calypso would replace those beats.

Once Ali was onstage in his white tracksuit, the 10-man crew toned down the Latin flair and stayed away from the steel drums. When the rapper launched into “Puzzle,” one of the percussionists sang the soul-record vocal sample (he didn’t sing it sped-up chipmunk-style like on the album, but I can’t blame the guy) and another able-lipped conga-player provided the whistle on “Walking Away.”

Ali, the only guy not playing to his hometown that night, won over the crowd with stories about hearing Eric B. & Rakim and Wu-Tang for the first time. He dedicated a song about the sad state of the nation to Nina Simone (sure, why not?) and later introduced “Forest Whitiker” by asking, “How many people here are beautiful and love yourself? How many are ugly, but love yourself anyway?” By the time he finished the self-deprecating song, which calls attention to the fact that he’s albino (in case you somehow hadn’t noticed) and repeats the refrain “You ain’t gotta love me,” it seemed like he’d made some new fans.

Next up was Ghostface Killah, who doubled the number of people onstage, bringing out four mic-wielding dudes (including Cappadonna) and an entourage that hung out in the shadows. Ghost was as entertaining as ever and a good example of what drugs do to the human brain. (Favorite random quote of the evening — apropos of nothing, I swear — “We ain’t aliens!”)

Again, the band proved its worth. The Shadows’ “Apache” has been sampled in hip-hop plenty of times, but it’s not often that you get to hear the trumpets blaring live. Throughout his set, Ghostface quizzed the audience on lines to classic Clan songs … and he apparently didn’t like what he heard. After inviting the crowd to shout along to “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” as a tribute to Ol’ Dirty Bastard (it would have been ODB’s 39th birthday the day before), the MC muttered, “That was cool. That was all right. … It wasn’t impressive.” Then he gave us a C.

Whatever, Ghostface. Rakim didn’t even have to announce a quiz: The legendary MC dropped the mic on random lines in songs like “Mahogany” and “I Know You Got Soul,” and the audience was always ready to fill in the blanks. Everything the man did riled the crowd, even if he overlooked a certain segment of the local population. Three times Rakim called out the boroughs, telling residents to throw their hands up: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx … Long Island … New Jersey? Now how was Ghostface supposed to throw his hands up if Rakim kept forgetting about Shaolin?