THIS RECORD EXEC TAKES THE RAP--GLADLY

You could excuse Bryan Turner if he feels a little bit like the new Rodney Dangerfield of rock executives. After all, he doesn’t get any respect.

In the last 14 months, his label, Priority Records, has sold more than 1.5 million records. But none of the label’s albums have ever been listed on the Billboard charts. In fact, even most people inside the music industry have never heard of Priority Records, which has quietly become the hip K-Tel of the record business.

In just two years, the company--which specializes in compilation albums--has sold more than 3 million albums, largely through mass-merchandising retail outlets like K Mart and Sears. But whereas K-Tel’s success came mostly through packaging oldies collections, Priority has made most of its profits compiling a more modern sound--rap music.

Priority has released five rap collections, headed by last year’s “Kings of Rap” compilation, which came equipped with a rap instruction manual and has sold more than 250,000 copies. And Turner predicts that the label’s newest record, the just-released “Rap’s Greatest Hits,” will be the company’s biggest sales bonanza yet.

“I have to admit that everyone keeps telling me I’m crazy,” said Turner, 31, a Canadian who worked at K-Tel for five years before starting his own label. “After we put out each new rap collection, our accounts would say ‘Forget it, rap is over.’ But we keep selling records. Everyone is into rap now, even 12-year-old white kids in Texas.”

Without the budget to make national TV ad buys, Priority has wooed customers with an old-fashioned marketing tool--flashy album covers. The front jacket of its new rap hits collection features an Oscar-like statuette, only sketched as a portrait of a young rapper, with a boom-box on his shoulder and a turntable instead of a pedestal.

“The marketing of our records is crucial to our success,” said Turner. “When you’re putting together compilations, you can’t sell the artist’s image. You have to create an image through the album artwork. When the kids are walking through the stores with Mom, it’s all impulse buying. They know who ZZ Top is, but they don’t know about ‘Rap’s Greatest Hits.’ So the jackets are everything. That’s what gets the kids to tug on Mom’s sleeve and say, ‘I want that!’ ”

The compilation business is clearly not the glamour end of the rock industry. Many top artists won’t even allow their hits to be licensed to compilation labels like Priority, which pays anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 for the rights to individual songs. According to Turner, stars like Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Prince and the Rolling Stones are “untouchable--they don’t need the money.”

Still, Turner has managed to obtain plenty of other material, which his label has released in such packages as “Greatest Soundtrack Hits,” “Christmas Country Classics” and “Immortals of Rock ‘n Roll,” songs by legendary performers who, as the label copy euphemistically describes it, “are no longer with us.”

(Priority has just obtained the rights to a collection of British pop hits whose artist and publishing royalties go to the Prince’s Trust, a charity organized by Prince Charles that supports disadvantaged youth. Turner’s proposed title for the album: “Prince Charles and Princess Di’s Royal Collection.”)

Turner’s label is still small enough that he still accepts new “album concepts” from outsiders, cutting them in on the action if he uses their ideas. But that doesn’t mean that every new concept is a winner. He said that someone recently came to him with a plan to release a compilation of songs that all had “Eyes” in the title, like “Bette Davis Eyes” and “For Your Eyes Only.”

“I immediately hired him,” he said, with a laugh. “No, actually, I sent him to Rhino, who’s really great at doing that crazy kind of stuff. But that’s the wonderful part of this business. You can come up with ideas from almost anywhere.”