With his elaborate metaphors, copyrighted slang, taunting of other rappers and semiautomatic lip, MC Serch may have the biggest mouth in hip-hop. As coleader of 3rd Bass, Serch shared the mike with Pete Nice, and their music was overcrowded; words and ideas flowed too rapidly to be understood, and their albums went on and on like a telethon. On his own with Return of the Product, the self-crowned "baddest white boy to ever fuckin' touch a mike" is still jawing like a shark, offering a more concise edition of his enlightened traditionalism.

"I like Cypress Hill and don't have to smoke blunts/And when the beat comes in, you don't have to jump," Serch rhymes in "Don't Have to Be," a declaration of individuality that defines his mission. As before, he works in between the clone categories created by rap's success. He continues to reminisce about the old-school heyday of hip-hop yet incorporates jazzy acoustic bass and funked-up guitar like the new-school upstarts. He continues to dog Hammer ("He'd be my bitch if me and him were in the slammer") yet rejects the cop shooting of gangsta rap and respects women enough to note that his girlie is now his wife.

And while Serch's comic sense is matched only by Biz Markie, his heated delivery arises from the outrage of his political tracks. "Hard but True" uses news headlines to denounce bias in the legal system, while "Social Narcotics" updates Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and traces racial injustice to our conquest of the U.S. ("[Indians] brought the corn and the bread/And in return we gave'em muskets to the head?").

The most threatening rhyme on Return of the Product comes during Nasty Nas's nun-gunning cameo in the boisterous "Back to the Grill." Anger doesn't lead to violence in Serch's mind, but to the idealism and unity he first detected as a white kid in a black art form. Now that MCs are noticed less for their skills than for the extremism of their politics, someone so sensible might have a hard time getting heard. (RS 640)

ROB TANNENBAUM