Teen heartthrob Chris Brown, R&B's fastest rising star, has been seen in recent months on television and motion picture screens channeling pop music's past.

The 18-year-old Virginian performed Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in a Charlie Chaplin suit on the MTV "Video Music Awards," recreated the title-song scene from Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" with help from a cellblock full of dancers on CBS' "Movies Rock!" and, in his co-starring role in "This Christmas," delivered Otis Redding's arrangement of "Try a Little Tenderness" and the Donny Hathaway song after which the film was named. In each case, Brown managed to capture the spirit of the original performances while investing them with his own distinctive and highly commanding style.

During a sold-out Oracle Arena show Saturday night, Brown gave the predominately teenaged multiracial crowd a visually stunning glimpse at the future of pop-music performance. The 90-minute high-tech spectacle was filled with video trickery, science-fiction imagery, laser lights, onstage flamethrowers so hot that they could be felt on the arena floor, bass-drum beats so loud that they reverberated through concertgoers' chest cavities and, of course, loads of fabulous song and dance. It was like a music video, video game, fireworks display and concert all rolled up into one.

Brown, whose second CD, "Exclusive," is in the pop top 10, was in constant motion and good voice, although the positioning of his microphone at times suggested the singing might be more Memorex than real. His tenor tones may be a bit thin and whiny, but they were remarkably pliant as he negotiated melismata with a Sam Cooke-like grace, especially on love songs such as "Yo (Excuse Me Miss)" and "With You."

While Brown's voice may or may not have been canned, three-fourths of his backup band were definitely an illusion. At his last Bay Area concert, in October of last year at the same venue, the singer was supported by a small ensemble of live instrumentalists. This time around, eight appeared, yet it quickly became apparent that six of them - two guitarists, two keyboardists, a bassist and trumpet player - were not there at all, but rather on individual video screens. Further examination revealed that each of these life-size images was Brown himself pretending to play the instruments. Only two musicians were actually present: turntablist DJ Baby Drew and drummer Gerald Heyward, whose bashing accents helped bring life to the otherwise prerecorded instrumental and vocal backgrounds.

Although Brown has cut back on musicians, he was surrounded by a dozen dancers - men, women and children - throughout most of the show. Movement is the essence of Brown's entertainment, and the routines were brilliantly choreographed amalgamations of break dance, pop-and-lock and crump styles. The tall, lanky star was at the center of this undulating sea of bodies much of the time, except when DJ Baby Drew took over during quick wardrobe changes and when the two kids - dancer Myles Brown and rapper Scooter - grabbed the spotlight while Brown exited the stage only to re-emerge minutes later on a second makeshift stage on the opposite end of the arena floor, much to the surprise and delight of adoring fans. Brown and two dancers performed two songs, "Lottery" and "Take You Down," as the circular stage rotated. Screams turned to a deafening roar when he removed his T-shirt, and his well-toned, sweat-soaked torso rippled in time with the rhythm.

Brown sang duets with Lil Wayne, T-Pain and Rhianna, none of whom were actually there but appeared on video screens. He also did one with rapper Bow Wow, who was very much present, having served up a 55-minute set of his own before Brown's. The two men closed the show with "Shortie Like Me," their hit from last year. The song turned into a friendly dance competition in which Brown - who had saved his most breathtaking moves for last, including a series of backflips - easily got the best of the less-limber rapper.

Bow Wow, who was billed as co-headliner, gave the crowd seven years' worth of hits during his part of the concert, from "Bounce With Me" and "Bow Wow (That's My Name)" from his days as Lil Bow Wow to the current "Hey Baby (Jump Off)." Joined by DJ Jus and rapping sidekick Short Dawg, the 20-year-old, Ohio-born MC was highly animated, yet the energy level of his segment didn't reach a peak until Vallejo hip-hop legend E-40 made a surprise appearance performing his 2006 hyphy anthems "Yay Area" and "Tell Me When to Go." Keak Da Sneak, the Oakland rapper who coined the term "hyphy," also made a brief appearance during Brown's set with the tune "Super Hyphy." The hyphy phenomenon may have played out nationally last year, but judging from the audience's enthusiastic response to E-40 and Keak, it still strikes a chord in Oakland.