Ever since De La Soul rolled back the clock with De la Soul Is Dead last year, rap has edged away from its obsession with innovation and concentrated instead on recapturing the simpler pleasures of its old-school classics. From Boogie Down Productions to A Tribe Called Quest and the Beastie Boys, hip-hop experimentalists are stripping down mixes, pumping up the bass and passing the mike as if it were 1980 all over again.

Now newer rappers are boarding the nostalgia train, including the acclaimed New York/New Jersey (by way of Virginia State University) duo Das Efx. The platinum-selling rappers of EPMD executive produced Dead Serious, and their signature loping, thick beats and monstrous, Jeep-shaking bass effectively highlight the greatest old-school joy Das Efx offers: the fun of rhyming for its own sake.

Though Efx's Skoob is overly reliant on hip-hop's current craze for double-time pig Latin (a device that became annoying after only a few songs), his ability to switch rhythms midsentence – mid-word even – is balanced perfectly when partner Dre slips into a slower, behind-the-beat style. The rhymes themselves are gloriously meaningless: Other than the grossout diarrhea stories of "Looseys," Dead Serious contains almost nothing but an endless series of nonsense boasts and a seemingly infinite list of pop-culture references (everyone from Hulk Hogan to Doogie Howser turns up, and Skoob even pulls off rhyming "Madonna" and "Sinéad O'Connor").

Unfortunately, Das Efx slips when attempting to do more than tout its own skills. Do we really need yet another warning about gold diggers, evil skeezers and groupies ("Dum Dums")? And in the opening "Mic Checka," buried in pig Latin, the members of Das Efx brag that they're so bad they'll "smack a fag and yoke him up until he squeals." Retro musical attitudes are one thing; old-fashioned hate, though, is a matter that Das Efx truly needs to get dead serious about. (RS 631)

ALAN LIGHT