Perception: New York City = hip-hop mecca. Reality: Los Angeles and Oakland are kickin' New York's ass. West and East Coast hip-hop (primarily Southern Cal and NYC/Strong Island) function like two political parties with separate agendas, representatives and constituencies. Massive, broad-based coalitions are as rare as in presidential politics: In this analogy, because he transcends all boundaries, Dr. Dre is Ronald Reagan.

The West's manifesto reads like that of the East's little brother, yearning to prove tougher than big bro, dying to be noticed. The West walks, well, lowrides, with a bigger swagger, larger gun and greater urge to shock in the name of reality. Run (of D.M.C. fame) has kept a bag of cheeba inside his locker since "Here We Go" in 1983, but can you imagine him naming an album, as Dre did, after a big fat chronic sack?

Indeed, the West appears less interested in the politics of revolution than the posture of rebellion. While Public Enemy urges the entire universe to "Fight the Power," because "freedom of speech is freedom of death," N.W.A. screams "Fuck tha police ... a young nigger got it bad'cuz I'm brown." There's quasi-political organizations masquerading as rap groups on both coasts, but while the East's resemble the Black Panthers without guns, the West's recall the Panthers minus the 10-point plan.

Southern Cal's hot, but its hip-hop is cold: Shoot first, it advises, because it's do or be done in killer Cali. More than ever, Dre, Snoop, Ice Cube and Cypress Hill have been earning that rep as they do drive-bys on LL Cool J, Onyx and Naughty by Nature, unloading another fusillade with every platinum certification.

Careering around the corner with Desert Eagles and Glocks cocked to finish the job comes Menace II Society. Mirroring the movie, Menace's Cali kids kill: The soundtrack solidifies the West's lead in general dopeness over the slumping East. The wonderfully sinister hip-hop of Mz. Kilo, Spice 1, Ant Banks and the rest of the West Coast contingent dusts the sloppy, caricaturish songs of Menace New Yorkers Brand Nubian and Boogie Down Productions. Back in the day, it took a nation of MCs to hold them back. Now, just a few cities will do.

Big Apple schoolyard rhymes ring hollow next to the messages of the wild West: "Only the strong survive!" (Too $hort); "never leave the pad without packin' a gun!" (Ant Banks); "a nigga gots no heart!" (Spice 1). But the deepest pulses of hip-hop's darkest heart are tapped in MC Eiht's "Streight Up Menace."

Eiht's haunting stop-start flow burns in the biography of Caine, Menace's lead hero-villain-victim, as deeply as directors Allen and Albert Hughes' film. The sound you hear is the sonic bullet that ends this coastal cold war battle. But if the gat passes to the other coast, it's not because hip-hop's bottom line has changed. After 14 years of recording, rap has still not proved cathartic: The '93 Compton moan – "I grow up to be a straight-up menace. Cheeah" – sounds just like the '82 Bronx scream: "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. Huh, huh. Huh. Huh."

Poetic Justice's West Coast rappers impress like their Menace comrades, but this soundtrack's concern is a different kind of division. Great music is universal, but its light refracts through our personal lenses. Pop-culture destiny is class, education, race and gender. The differences between the sexes show up in their musical responses and attractions. Some men love heartfelt ballads, and some women live for hardcore rap, but the genders gravitate consistently enough to say – crudely – that there is men's music and there is women's music.

As the album attempts to please both genders, Poetic's survey of modern black pop spans from gangsta rap and lusty R&B to baby's-bottom-smooth soul and jazzy grooves. For the boys, Poetic's got densely funky rap from Mista Grimm, Dr. Dre (producing and performing with the Dogg Pound) and 2Pac. And while Menace isn't hiding the next West Coast megastar, Poetic might be, in producer Warren G., Dre's brother and Snoop Dogg's DJ. For Poetic, G. produced one song ("Indo Smoke") that would fit comfortably in the middle of The Chronic or Mothership Connection and another ("Definition of a Thug Nigga") with hooks as huge as director John Singleton's film is lame – very. The last time an unknown with ties to Dre made his way onto a summer soundtrack, he was soon as wildly popular as the supercool cartoon beagle with whom he shares a name. Stay tuned.

For girls, Singleton offers lazy Saturday afternoon R&B from Babyface, Terri and Monica, Cultural Revolution and Stevie Wonder. "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" is Wonder's ambitiously beautiful reach for the sky, but it sounds a little out of place among the up-to-the-minute hip-hop and R&B. Was Singleton looking for an "I Will Always Love You"?

Successful albums are bought by both men and women, but few discs try to appeal to each gender's separate desires. Poetic Justice does, so successfully it won't need Janet Jackson – who, the back cover helpfully states, does not contribute a recording – to bodyguard it up the charts.

But wait a minute – Singleton promised a film for the sisters, told from their point of view. Then why executive produce a women's-movie soundtrack with only half the songs for them and with only three of 15 songs by them? In the liner notes, Singleton says, "The music we listen to is an extension of who and where we are." What about the music we make? (RS 664)

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