A TONGUE-LASHING FROM SCHOOLLY D

Schoolly D may be the most famous rapper that nobody’s heard.

That’s because none of the Philadelphian’s two albums and several singles could possibly be played on the radio. If parents have bad dreams about the Beastie Boys or Run-D.M.C., Schoolly D is a full-blown nightmare.

His records have been described as an aural mugging. In his most notorious song, “P.S.K.--What Does It Mean,” Schoolly D finds another rapper imitating him at a party:

Got to the place and who did I see

Sucker . . . tryna sound like me

Put my pistol up against his head

I said ‘Sucker . . . I should shoot you dead.’

Nobody is safe in Schoolly D’s world--in “Saturday Night” he even has to tell his mother, “Put down the gun, momma, put down the broom.”

Schoolly D’s real name is Jessie Weaver, and he started putting out his own records after saving money from selling shoes. His notoriety is earning him offers from bigger labels, and his main concern seems to be money, not shooting people.

Still, the rumors persist--like the one that Weaver (who makes his local debut opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Variety Arts Center Saturday, then joins local rapper Ice T. at the Lingerie on Sunday) carries his gun in a Gucci bag.

Speaking from the Philadelphia office of his record label, Schoolly D Records, Weaver responded in a bored tone of voice: “I don’t carry a gun in a Gucci bag. It’s a Polo bag.”

Schoolly D’s nasty rappin’ might have been restricted to the East Coast rap circuit. But then John Leland wrote a piece in New York’s influential Village Voice extolling the rapper’s non-judgmental, straightforward descriptions of danger and sexual brutality. Other critics began adding to the praise.

Artists who deal in forbidden themes are often popular with critics, who view these no-holds-barred looks at the grimier side of existence as an example of Art serving Truth. But most performers who dabble in the forbidden, from Lou Reed to Mick Jagger, report on social decay from an artistic or intellectual distance.

The scary--and for the critics, intriguing--aspect of Schoolly D is that there’s no separation between his life and his rapping. Spin magazine, for example, went to Weaver’s ghetto neighborhood hoping to report on the more sensational aspects. “They just wanted to hang around, see somebody get shot,” Weaver noted with a trace of contempt.

Technically, Weaver isn’t that great a rapper. His style is lazy, sometimes whiny, as if he’s bored with the whole thing. He doesn’t pay much attention to hitting the beat dead on. And he admits that he didn’t get much notice until he started cursing.

“My raps were not really different until I started talking the way people talk on the streets. Then people started listening to me, so I kept that style. I’d stop cursin’ if people stopped cursin’ on the streets. It’s not that I just curse for the hell of it. It’s that I’m having a normal conversation.”

The white rock media’s praise of Schoolly D is ironic, since in “I Don’t Like Rock ‘n’ Roll” he crudely expresses his negative feelings for rockers before handling them in his usual manner: “You rock ‘n’ roll lovers get a gun in your face.”

(Presumably, Schoolly didn’t pull his pistol on English rocker Mick Jones, who had Schoolly D open for his group Big Audio Dynamite in London. Schoolly even left the weapon at home. “Guns are outlawed in England,” he related. “Can’t bring stuff like that in there. Don’t really need it though--people are so passive, it’s ridiculous.”)

How bad is Schoolly D? Some of the rumors--Schoolly walking into an interview, putting a gun on the table and telling a journalist he’d better write something nice--are untrue.

But some aren’t. Weaver, for example, admits that he once pulled a gun on a man at a record pressing plant where his albums were made. Weaver claims his records were being bootlegged. “You gotta take care of those situations like a gangster,” he explains.

Weaver is contemptuous of well-known rappers like the Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J.

“New York rappers . . . like Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys, they’re just playing a role that their producers . . . put together for them. None of them are for real. They’re just spoiled little rich kids that know how to act, basically. That’s it with those guys. It’s corny.”

Weaver’s lack of moral judgment about the world is unnerving for anyone coming from the safety of a middle-class upbringing. He says he’s seen at least two people murdered and that it had no effect on him at all.

When asked if he feels any sympathy for innocent victims of violence, Weaver replied, “There are no innocent people. Not in this world today. If they get shot, then they’ve gone on to a better land. That’s the way I look at it.”

Chillin’, indeed.