*** 3RD BASS “The Cactus Album” <i> Def Jam / Columbia</i>

Call 3rd Bass the Teena Marie of rap. Where the Beasties combined the black tradition of hip-hop with the very white one of speed metal, 3rd Bass--two white guys, one schooled at Columbia University--do a kind of danceable post-Public Enemy collegiate rap indistinguishable from that of a hundred new black crews, the way that Teena Marie sounds like Stacy Lattisaw.

The Beastie Boys’ supposed inauthenticity is one of 3rd Bass’ great subjects, along with sexual organs and racial inequality--though boys who go to Ivy League schools shouldn’t talk about silver spoons. The formula seems to work; the album is Top 20 and rising in Billboard magazine’s black music chart.

The couple of tracks produced by De La Soul producer Prince Paul are witty and quirky like De La Soul, but 3rd Bass laughs so hard at its own jokes that you’re hard-pressed to join in. The textures are sample-rich, but where Eric B. would use James Brown, they use Blood, Sweat & Tears.

3rd Bass has mastered the current fashion for dense gobbets of sound pulled from the guts of the media, layered thick enough so that you hear new stuff with each listening, but it seems a hollow display of technique. One track produced by Public Enemy producers Hank Shocklee and Eric Sadler, “Oval Office,” has the nervous intensity of PE’s “Fight the Power,” with the nice addition of a funky horn line and without the authority a really distinctive rap voice might give it. Of course, “The Cactus Album” sounds better on the dance floor than it does on the turntable.