New Rap Attack : Pop Music: Targeted by an anti-obscenity crusader for ‘painting bull’s-eyes on American women,’ rapper Too Short says he just gives his fans what they want.

Todd (Too Short) Shaw--the latest sexually explicit rapper to be drawn into the growing national debate over obscenity in pop music--makes no bones about what he does for a living.

“There’s a lot of money in rapping dirty,” he says. “We’re running a business here. I give my fans what they want.”

Shaw is equally unfazed by the fact that he is the latest target of Jack Thompson, the Florida attorney whose complaints about rap group 2 Live Crew ignited the controversy that led Wednesday to the obscenity conviction of a retailer in Ft. Lauderdale for selling a copy of 2 Live Crew’s “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” album.

After that decision, Thompson said he will broaden his attack against “pornographic” rap to include Too Short and the Geto Boys.

The Geto Boys album, titled “The Geto Boys,” has been an issue in pop since Geffen Records, objecting to the record’s violent sexual imagery, refused in September to distribute the album for Def American Records, which signed the act. Def American then severed ties with Geffen and signed a distribution deal with WEA.

But Thompson’s announcement this week represents Too Short’s entry into the national debate--even though Shaw has been marketing sexually explicit music through a major distributor (RCA) since 1988.

In an interview Friday, Thompson charged that Too Short’s music “encourages raw misogynist violent sex . . . He is just another guy who makes his living painting bulls-eyes on American women, targeting them to be the victims of rape and sexual abuse.”

Over the past few weeks, Thompson has spent his days transcribing explicit lyrics from the new “Short Dog” release and faxing them to law-enforcement agencies in Florida, Ohio, Minnesota and Texas. He also sent a flurry of letters to the headquarters of the Musicland group, the nation’s largest retail record chain, demanding they pull the record.

“If I could say one thing to Mr. Too Short, it would be that he better get himself a very good lawyer,” Thompson said by phone from Greenville, S.C., where he is scheduled to speak tonight on the current leg of his 40-college debate tour. “And that goes for Musicland and RCA too, because I’m coming after all of them.”

RCA Records and Musicland executives refused to comment on the matter, but Jive Records senior vice president Barry Weiss called the Too Short controversy a First Amendment issue.

In a phone interview after hearing about Thompson’s campaign against him, Shaw said, “The guy seems like a real weirdo to me. I really have no desire to fight toe to toe with somebody who is always sticking his nose in other people’s business. I’m a rapper. That’s my job. But hey, it’s a free country. Do what you got to do, Jack.”

He added, “My raps aren’t just about putting down or disrespecting women. I also do comedy and talk about social issues. Almost 50 percent of my fans are women.”

Shaw said he also markets a clean version of each album, and marks the explicit versions with parental warning stickers.

His last two albums sold a combined 1.5 million copies, and the latest one, titled “Short Dog’s in the House,” has already sold more than 750,000 in just two weeks, despite virtually no radio airplay.

The younger of two brothers, Shaw grew up in Los Angeles, where his parents were accountants. Moving to Oakland in 1980, he began rapping at the age of 14. By 1986, he had released two tame, “PG-rated” rap albums on an independent label and started laying down sexually explicit tracks on a makeshift studio in his bedroom.

A self-produced 12-minute X-rated number titled “Freaky Tales”--of which Shaw sold 14,000 copies from the trunk of his car--led to his current Jive Records contract.

“People ask me, why do I rap dirty?” Shaw said rhetorically. “I read books. I watch movies. I have a good vocabulary, but if I use big words then how is Joe Blow, who never got out of 10th grade, supposed to be able to comprehend what I’m saying? How can I make street records and expect to relate to my fans without speaking the language?”