On his third album, Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D conjures up a world that is everyone's worst nightmare of what hip-hop is all about. With its images of gun-toting bluster, mushrooming genitals and rampant drug use – backed by thuddingly dull beats – Smoke Some Kill should be played for every prospective rapper so he'll know what not to do.

Of course, much of hip-hop deals with the vagaries of street life, but the best in the field – Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, Ice-T – illuminate it with a distinctly personal point of view. Others, such as Eric B. and Rakim and EPMD, may not have as much to say, but they employ such devastating beats that they pummel the listener into submission.

Schoolly D sports neither of these attributes, and he doesn't even show the courage of his minimal convictions. On "We Don't Rock, We Rap," Schoolly D warns all "longhaired suckers get out of my face" but follows it with "Signifying Rapper," on which he expropriates the riff from Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." That's followed by the dunderheaded "No More Rock n' Roll," which only serves to further complicate this musical schizophrenia.

On side two, Schoolly injects politics into his steady diet of shameless self-promotion, but it's by-the-numbers black nationalism, which pales next to anything from Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

If, as some suggest, hip-hop is heavy metal's urban twin – both often being misogynistic, homophobic and critic resistant and having a core audience of devoted working-class kids – then Schoolly D is this year's Mötley Crüe, all flash and no flesh. Just say no. (RS 539)

CARY DARLING