POP MUSIC : Straight Outta Islam : Movement Ex leads L.A., birthplace of ‘gangsta rap,’ into the confrontational world of Islamic rap

Lord Mustafa Hasan Ma’d, half of the rap duo Movement Ex, is reflecting on his early adolescence as he eats a late lunch at Good Life Health Food, a small, Crenshaw Boulevard shop that also hosts community-oriented jazz and rap shows.

“I conducted myself as a savage in pursuit of happiness,” the husky 19-year-old says between bites of a vegetarian burger. “I did everything young teen-agers are doing. I ran with a gang for a minute, treated females bad. . . . . That’s how young black North Americans are taught to behave.”

But two years ago, the somber Mustafa continues, his father sat the teen-ager down and outlined some of the tenets of the Muslim faith to his son. Black Muslims generally lead a conservative, disciplined lifestyle that emphasizes black self-sufficiency, and, increasingly, black separatism.

Mustafa was so taken with what he heard that he checked further into the Muslim religion and became intrigued by the radical Five Percent Nation of Islam, a small North American Muslim sect that takes its name from the belief that only 5% of the black population has a true awareness of the role of blacks in history and the oppression facing blacks today. Its doctrine includes the belief that whites are “devils.”

“When I came to know myself, I began to act as a civilized human being,” Mustafa says matter-of-factly of his 1989 conversion.

In Movement Ex’s debut album, Mustafa and his deejay partner King Born, 18, combine their philosophical views and hard-edged hip-hop grooves with an evangelical zeal.

“There is no hope for white America” the duo declares in “United Snakes of America,” one of the album’s most striking tracks.

Movement Ex remains a bit isolated in Los Angeles, where the “gangsta rap” of N.W.A. and Ice Cube still sets the tone. Yet Mustafa believes his raps can be taken as a progression from rather than rejection of the graphic violence and rage of the gangstas.

King Born, sitting with his partner at the restaurant, insists his group’s message isn’t anti-white, but rather a challenge to the ruling class in America to change its “devilish” ways. “It doesn’t do any good to teach one race to be civilized and let the other run savage,” he says.

Movement Ex’s strong, confrontational approach is typical of Islamic rap, which has emerged in recent months as the new sociopolitical voice of the street-spawned urban sound.

Joining the duo in an assault on mainstream attitudes that sometimes makes such veteran rap hard-liners as Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions appear tame are New York’s Brand Nubian, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers and Lakim Shabazz. (See album guide, Page 71).

“It’s already a very significant part of rap music,” John Shecter, editor of the Source, a New York-based rap magazine, says of the Islamic rap movement. “There’s a lot of knowledge being dropped and a lot of people learning perspectives we don’t get from school or TV.”

There’s no way anyone’s going to mistake Islamic rap for the ribald humor of 2 Live Crew and Tone Loc or the party pop moves of Vanilla Ice and M.C. Hammer.

The strident music is characterized by an emphasis on “self-knowledge” as the key to the salvation of black culture--a legacy and history, the rappers maintain, that were lost when Africans were brought to this country as slaves.

The Source magazine’s Shecter traces the movement to the rap

groups World Famous Supreme Team and the Fresh Three MCs of the early and mid ‘80s, though neither was explicit about its Islamic beliefs in its albums.

The transition began in the late ‘80s when Rakim of Eric B. & Rakim and Big Daddy Kane became more open about their ties to the Five Percent Nation, and as Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy set a new creative tone for rap by stressing the importance of a black perspective on social issues.

The breakthrough in Islamic-related rap came with the rise of such New York groups as A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, whose “3 Feet High and Rising” was voted the best album of 1989 in a poll of U.S. pop critics.

But the new wave of groups has introduced a far more stark and intense tone--much of it descended from the writings of Elijah Muhammad, who founded the Nation of Islam in New York in the ‘30s.

The Five Percent Nation--a term based on Muhammad’s belief that only 5% of the population understood the true history of world culture and the black man’s dominant role in it--is related to, though separate from, other North American Islamic sects, including the controversial Louis Farrakhan’s current Nation of Islam.

“I’m not saying all white people are living according to devilish ways, but the ones in power and the ones with money seem to,” said Lord Jammar Allah of the rap group Brand Nubian. “It’s not an absolute, but it’s like the color of the skin seems to be a reflection of the mentality. . . . (But) we know there are black people doing bad things to other black people.”

Still, the feelings of race are strong enough that when the Source magazine hosted a recent “summit meeting” of 20 Islamic rappers, editor Shecter--who is white--left the office, as did the other non-black members of the magazine’s staff.

“All the white people left voluntarily,” Shecter says. “We didn’t want to be there. It’s not our place. . . . But if I can get their ideas out to other people, I’m happy to be doing it.”

Shecter says that the Five Percent rappers are not encouraging violence. But the rappers themselves, citing the militant Black Panthers organization and Malcolm X as influences, say that physical confrontations may be inevitable.

Oakland rapper Paris, a member of the Nation of Islam, models himself explicitly in the mold of the Black Panthers, as the track “Panther Power” on his recent debut album “The Devil Made Me Do It” makes clear:

Clear the way for P-Dog the militant

Made to steer and care for the indigent

Power to the people is a serious concept

Panthers prowl when I say to step .

“Peace is a means and violence is a means,” offers Lord Jammar, 22, from New York. “It’s not limited. Self-defense is part of survival. If violence in order to survive is necessary then that’s what needs to be done. If things can be settled in a peaceful way then that’s the way it should be done, but Malcolm X said, ‘By any means necessary.’ ”

Professor X, head of a New York rap collective called the Black Watch, has more than just philosophical ties to past radicals.

His father, Sonny Carson, is a noted black activist who led the 1990 boycott of a Korean-owned grocery in the Bronx and a traffic-stopping stand-in on the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the racially motivated murder of black youth Yusuf Hawkins. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Carson served a prison sentence for the kidnaping of two men who were later found dead. Carson was tried, but not convicted, on charges of murdering them.

Professor X (real name: Lumumba Carson) is not a Five Percenter--he wasn’t invited to the Source magazine summit, and the ancient Egyptian imagery and icons used by him and his associates X-Clan and female rapper Isis have drawn some ridicule from Five Percenters. But he shares many of the sect’s goals.

“It can be called black nationalism, it might be called separatism, it might be called racist,” Professor X, 28, says. “But all we are saying is it is time for us to clean up our home. If someone considers it racism or separatism, there’s nothing I can do about it. All I know is we want to bring young people to this state of mind, see that we are in control of our destiny.”

Islamic Rap isn’t setting the charts on fire like M.C. Hammer, but Movement Ex’s “United Snakes of America” is currently on the Billboard rap chart and albums by Brand Nubian, Professor X, Isis, King Sun, Paris and X-Clan--as well as Movement Ex--have been on the Billboard R&B; charts.

Still, how big is the Five Percent movement?

A recent national survey of religious identification directed by sociologist Barry A. Kosmin of the City University of New York’s graduate school placed the number of Muslims in the United States at about 1.4 million (527,000 adults), with 40% of them African-Americans. Though other estimates place the number of Muslims at as much as 8 million, only a fraction are believed to identify with the Five Percent sect.

George Lipsitz, an ethnic studies professor at UC San Diego specializing in African-American history, race and ethnicity in mass media, said that the movement’s influence is much broader than its actual numbers.

While rap has been the strongest outlet for the Afrocentric and Islamic beliefs, Lipsitz also notes its presence--in varying intensities--in popular language and style as reflected in, for example, Spike Lee films and the television series “Different World,” which is set at a black college.

“It’s representative of a real religious movement, but also a symbolic move to find some way to unite the community,” he says. “The (sense of) unity is as important as the specific content of the beliefs. All this relates back to the age-old problem for African-Americans: How do you get the rewards from a society that doesn’t have a place for you, but also has no desire to let you go your own way?”

Back in the Crenshaw Boulevard restaurant, Mustafa says he feels a growing interest in a new sociopolitical perspective.

“The No. 1 religion among young blacks is still Christianity, but the No. 1 growing religion is Islam,” he offers. “It’s a faith that is in the streets and easy to come by, so that makes it strong among the youth.”

It was on the streets of New York that Mustafa was first exposed to the Five Percent philosophy, having divided his youth between there and Los Angeles. He met his collaborator King Born in 1988 while both were students at Los Angeles’ Hamilton High School; they teamed up to enter local rap competitions.

One person they impressed was actor Michael T. Washington, who this season was a regular on the NBC drama series “Midnight Caller.” He took over as the duo’s manager, and a demo tape led to a Columbia Records contract.

Though it’s gangsta rappers Ice Cube and Ice-T that come to mind when L.A. rap is mentioned, Mustafa feels time is on his side. “The gangsta rap brings forth the problems,” he says, pushing away from the table. “But what is the solution? We have the solution--for people who are willing to listen.”