POP MUSIC SPECIAL : Black Teenagers: Color MCA Nervous

With such a sweet, innocent-sounding name, it’s hard to imagine that the Young Black Teenagers are becoming rap music’s most controversial new group. Even though their thought-provoking debut album won’t be out till mid-November, the New York-based group is already in hot water.

MTV has refused to play the video to the group’s first single, “Nobody Knows Kelli,” branding it “obscene.”

MCA Records, which distributes the group through S.O.U.L. Records, is so worried about reaction to the band that it won’t put its name on the record, even though the album is MCA’s first project with the highly touted S.O.U.L. team of Hank Shocklee and Bill Stephney, key figures in the success of such top rappers as L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys.

Why the rumpus?

Reason No. 1: The Young Black Teenagers are . . . white.

Reason No. 2: The group’s album includes a song explaining their fondness for rap music and black culture that is titled, “Daddy Called Me a Nigger ‘Cause I Liked to Rhyme.”

“There’s no doubt that the group is going to be controversial, starting with their name,” explains Stephney, who is black, and who started S.O.U.L. after a long stint as vice president of Def Jam Records, the premier rap label of the ‘80s. “I think it’s great that these white kids are so into black culture.

“But here’s my problem. I have to convince black radio programmers that these kids aren’t some kind of minstrel thing. And I have to convince white programmers that these kids have a true white teen audience. So we’re definitely walking a marketing tightrope.”

With one white rapper, Vanilla Ice, currently in the Top 10, and others on the way, Stephney sees the Young Black Teenagers as symbols of a new era in rap music.

“These kids are classic examples of a new generation of urban white kids--white b-boys--who haven’t been segregated from Afro-American culture,” he said. “They didn’t grow up on Jethro Tull or Pink Floyd. They grew up listening to black rap and dance music.

“I just saw a recent survey which found that 70% of rap music in the past six months was bought by white kids. No wonder M.C. Hammer has been No. 1 for months. You’re not just hearing Hammer in the South Bronx. You’re hearing him blasting on Jeeps all over the suburbs.”

Stephney insists he has no qualms about his group sprinkling its “Daddy Called Me” song with a racial epithet--even though the rap community jumped all over Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose for using the same word in his “One in a Million” song last year.

“There’s a big difference,” he says. “Axl is promoting the use of the word. These kids are trying to destroy it. This song talks about how negative and destructive the word is.”

Still, MCA is nervous.

“We’re totally behind the group, but it’s obvious that with a project like this, the group could be open to attack from all sides,” says MCA Records chairman Al Teller, who worked with Stephney and Shocklee when Teller ran CBS Records. “Bill and Hank’s background gives them such great credibility that we preferred to focus attention on the music. After some internal deliberations, we decided not to confuse the issue with MCA’s identification. We’re not trying to hide anything, we just don’t want the label itself to become the issue.”

In other words, MCA seems content to have Stephney and Shocklee take the heat for any uproar the video might provoke.

As for MTV--the video channel says it hasn’t added the clip to its playlist because programmers weren’t particularly enthusiastic about the song. But Stephney says MTV’s standards-and-practices department told him the video was obscene. “The problem is they won’t say why,” he says. “We’re wondering if it’s the concept that bothers them. Maybe they’re scared of a white group calling itself the Young Black Teenagers.”

Stephney knows a little controversy goes a long way, especially when it comes to selling records these days. “But this isn’t hype--the music industry is hurting now because there’s been too much hype on things that people don’t want to buy,” he says. “We just want people to hear the record. We have a saying around here: The hype is in the music.”