Kool Moe Dee

When Kool Moe Dee released his self-titled debut album in early 1987, he benefited from something few popular rappers of the day could claim: experience. The Harlem native had been making crisp, danceable rap records with the now-legendary Treacherous Three since the late '70s, and with Kool Moe Dee he caught up with gritty, hard-rocking contemporary hip-hop without smudging his silky white sweats. The breakthrough was "Go See the Doctor," a safe-sex PSA driven home by Moe Dee's wonderfully ribald humor and a young Teddy Riley's irresistible electrofunk production. If Boogie Down Productions' KRS-One was the new school's "Teacher," then "Go See the Doctor" suggested Moe Dee was the school's dapper, charismatic principal, a senior role model who could joke with the boys and flirt with the girls yet still crack the whip.

The rest of Kool Moe Dee whips it good, too. With its balance of bawdy braggadocio and pointed parables, the album deserves a place alongside that seminal year's most celebrated hip-hop albums, including Boogie Down Production's Criminal Minded and Moe Dee's own amazing followup, How Ya Like Me Now. Despite the rushed turnaround, Moe Dee's second album is so confident that it even includes a report card rating the competition. The music is fuller and the raps more urgent than on the debut, too, perhaps inspired by the performer's infamous feud with L.L. Cool J, the target of the slamming title track. If so, Moe Dee also proves he can rise above with his tough, funny look at street beefs, "Wild, Wild West."

Two long years later, however, Moe Dee dropped his heady combination of hardness and humor with Knowledge Is King, a disc in which the rapper became just another quality entertainer promising nothing more or less than "I Go to Work." Even so, the album hits hard thanks to the political consciousness that suffused hip-hop in 1989, and thanks to the peak skills of producer Teddy Riley, who by now was a New Jack star in his own right. Moe Dee's work ethic is also evident on his last original album for a major label, Funke, Funke Wisdom. But although the disc is musically varied and spiked with clever rhymes, titles like "Here We Go Again" suggest how tired some themes had gotten. Interlude is a wishful thought more than a description, as Moe Dee fumbles through various experiments searching for a viable new style in the gangsta-riddled mid-'90s.

In the end, the only "interlude" Moe Dee's last album provided was between his two Jive anthologies. Greatest Hits has more cuts, all 15 of them sensibly if predictably selected. The Jive Collection, Vol. 2 shares nine titles with Greatest Hits, but it has chronologi-cal sequencing, slightly nicer packaging, and three fine selections not on Hits, including "Knowledge Is King," which sums up his message in three sharp words. (FRANKLIN SOULTS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide