Rhyme the Beastie Way: Strong, Clean, Funny : THE BEASTIE BOYS “Paul’s Boutique.” Capitol *** 1/2

Rap is what you hear pounding from boom boxes. Metal is what you hear blasting from ’74 Camaros. The first Beastie Boys LP, “Licensed to Ill,” was essentially an awesome metal-rap hybrid--Run-DMC wrote some of the rhymes, a guy from Slayer played some of the guitar. The album didn’t cross over as much as it appealed to two distinct audiences: KDAY and KROQ both played the heck out of it, although each station played different cuts.

Though the hard-core aesthetics are similar, metal basically serves the function for white teen-agers (KROQ) that rap does for black ones (KDAY), which is why you never saw the surge in white rap so many people predicted after “Ill” went to No. 1. The would-be Big Daddy Kanes turned out mostly to be would-be Metallicas.

“Ill” was produced by Rick Rubin, who more or less invented the rap-metal thing. “Paul’s Boutique,” the new one, was produced by the Hollywood dance-club phenoms called the Dust Brothers, roughly the team who gave Tone Loc’s beats their distinctive, shuffling sound. The low-tech amalgam of sly ‘70s soul here is funky as can be.

The bratty Beasties from “Ill” still aren’t what you’d call redemptive--on this one, they rap about egg fights, impersonate various armed drifters and feature that thingamajig that moos like a cow when you turn it over--but when they go into the Dead End Kid riff, it at least sounds like self-parody now, and they’ve resumed the use of their real names. (Horovitz isn’t the easiest name to rhyme, but they manage.) The rhymes are strong and clean and funny: “You’re all mixed up like pasta primavera/Why do you throw that chair at Geraldo Rivera?