At last, spoken word you can dance to. With the release of her powerful debut album, No More Mister Nice Girl, Maggie Estep launches not only a new spoken-word label, NuYo Records, but a genre. A main player at New York City's Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a scene that is largely responsible for today's live-poetry revival, Estep recently performed on national stages as part of MTV's Free Your Mind Unplugged tour. On No More she uses a deadly combination of sly wit, deep weirdness and sure timing to nail her subjects in a series of hooky "songs," half-sung, half-spoken.

As much as Estep nods to her twin muses, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop, her real forebears are Pere Ubu's David Thomas, Captain Beefheart and, not least, Karen "I yam what I yam" Finley, whose rants mamboed with a drum machine on Tales of Taboo (Pow Wow) some years back. Here, Estep employs the post-No Wave band I Love Everybody, which includes the infamous Pat Place (Bush Tetras, the Contortions) to back her with enough funky grunge buzz to give her urban-girl adventures an extra steel-toed kick.

Estep allows her fantasies to spin out from the merely sarcastic into the patently surreal as her female heroes tangle with lovers and other strangers. In the opening piece, "Hey Baby," she takes up a harasser's come-on and then some as she suggests a progressively bizarre scenario involving nondairy creamer. "If I were ever to run for political office, panty sweat would be the theme of my campaign," she proclaims in "I'm Not a Normal Girl."

As for the poetry, well, poetry was always meant to be said out loud, and if Estep's concerns occasionally seem repetitive (she's particularly fond of cheese, underwear and people barking like dogs), her lyrics are otherwise fresh, funny and flagrantly, fabulously fulsome. But the real surprise is this record's rhythms, from the sexy rock-steady yearning of "Paradise Lost" to the exhilarated delivery of "Fuck Me."

Patti Smith, bless her heart, didn't have a funny bone in her body. Estep manages to be both nasty and immensely likable, with a beat. (RS 684)

BARBARA O'DAIR