POP MUSIC : Rap <i> en</i> ‘Spanglish’ : On his way to becoming an accountant, Gerardo sheds his suits for torn jeans and a racy image to hit it big in an untapped market

Latino Ice?

That’s what some pop observers have dubbed Gerardo, dismissing him as a lightweight echo of Vanilla Ice, the pop star who helped bring rap to the suburbs last year.

Gerardo, whose sultry but monotonous “Rico Suave” single made the Top 10 earlier this year in the United States and Latin America and whose current single “We Want the Funk” is rising fast on the charts, is the first “Spanglish” rapper to hit the big time. Mellow Man Ace and Kid Frost attracted some attention last year for their combination of English and Spanish rap, but they didn’t have the pinup cheekbones or mainstream pop sound of Gerardo.

“The hard-core rap community laughs at Gerardo. He’s someone who’s considered to have made it on looks and dancing and stage presence,” said Chris Willman, who reviewed Gerardo’s performance recently at the Universal Amphitheatre for The Times. “He’s another ‘Made for MTV’ rapper whose records are virtually unlistenable by most standards.”

David Wild, of Rolling Stone magazine, acknowledged Gerardo is not a critical favorite but said he is a healthy development in pop music. “I’m really excited about anything that takes something remotely Latin and puts it into pop culture. Maybe it will make people go out and find out who Tito Puente was.”

Gerardo doesn’t react much when other Latino rappers are mentioned, but he bristles at the suggestion that he’s in the Vanilla Ice tradition. Despite the fluffy teen tone of “Rico Suave,” Gerardo insists he’s a serious rapper.

“I don’t want to dog (Vanilla Ice); I don’t know the guy personally. . . . But as an artist, he’s not one of my favorites,” Gerardo said, trying to shift the subject to someone the native Ecuadorean does admire: M.C. Hammer.

“He’s someone I can somewhat relate to: ghetto-blasting lyrics, positive messages,” he said.

Gerardo--whose family name is Mejia--regards his music, derived from the dual influences of Latin rhythms and funk, as good, clean fun. He even sees a positive message in the racy lyrics of “Rico Suave” and the sexy dance maneuvers of the accompanying video.

What could he possibly see as socially uplifting in these steamy lyrics from the song?:

I don’t love you but I need you

Would you rather have me lie

Take a piece of your pie and say bye

Or be honest and rub your thighs?

He’s quick to reply:

“I’m somewhat making fun of the Latin lover image, and somewhat I want to make the Hispanic audience feel good about themselves. I don’t like the way we are portrayed (in films and on television). As a rapper and having the edge on things right now, why not say that we are the Don Juans and the studs, why not make them feel good?”

Gerardo--who speaks Spanish at home--also sees his rapid rise as a positive message to other young Latinos, whatever their individual goals may be.

“I’m always hesitant to say, ‘Yeah, I want to be a role model,’ because a lot of times being a role model is a tough thing,” he said, sitting in a Hollywood recording studio just before leaving on a 36-city MTV-sponsored tour that includes an appearance at the Universal Amphitheatre on Aug. 16.

“But I want people, young kids, to look at me and see I’m just a regular guy who just went for his dream,” Gerardo said. “When I go out to a concert, I say, ‘Yo, are my homeboys out there?’ They feel good about themselves.”

To look at him these days, it would seem next to impossible that Gerardo, a heartthrob with the teen MTV set, was once well on his way to becoming a strait-laced accountant.

Indeed, for a couple of years, Gerardo sat in his father’s accounting firm near his home in Walnut, quietly crunching numbers while wearing a suit and tie.

But come nightfall Gerardo would throw off his businessman’s attire, strip down to bare chest and jeans and shimmy the hours away at some of Hollywood’s hottest dance clubs.

His decision to drop accounting and pursue his dream of singing and dancing raised the ire of his immigrant father. “He almost killed me,” Gerardo said. “He had got me a brand-new office. I had a new computer, I had a bad typewriter, the works, man.”

But Gerardo loved the night life and the funky beat of artists like George Clinton. He became convinced he could make it in the entertainment world.

His father eventually came around--after Gerardo promised that if he didn’t hit the big time within a year, he would return to the quiet life of an accountant.

“It made sense to try out for my dream,” he said, and if things didn’t work out, “I’d fall back on what I’d learned.”

But Gerardo has not had to fall back on crunching numbers and wearing suits.

Stardom has come fast and furious for Gerardo, who emigrated to the United States at 12 and who, at 26, still lives with his family in Walnut and pays regular visits to his high school algebra teacher.

These days his accounting background only comes in handy when he’s signing recording contracts and negotiating with his business manager.

And then there is the matter of Gerardo’s chiseled face and sinewy pectorals, which are increasingly being featured on the pages of the nation’s most popular magazines and on late-night talk shows. For photo shoots or interviews he rarely sports more than torn jeans, with underwear exposed. After Gerardo’s appearance on “The Tonight Show” last month, guest host Jay Leno donned similar attire and pretended to dance like the rapper.

Add to all this frequent references to the steamy “Rico Suave” (which means “tasty and smooth” in Spanish) by Arsenio Hall and “Saturday Night Live’s” Dennis Miller, and you have the makings of a phenomenon. (Hall called himself “Arsenio Suave,” and Miller joked that Puerto Rico was changing its name to “Puerto Rico Suave.”)

Jimmy Iovine, president of Interscope Records, the label that signed Gerardo, thinks the singer “fills a great void.”

“He brings a spark to the general market and to the Latino audience,” Iovine said. “I think what he does is really great fun. The Latino thing is a very untapped market. I think he’s going to be even more successful.”

Gerardo began dancing in junior high school for a simple reason: to attract girls.

“I always wanted to stand out in school,” he said. “And I wasn’t a great person in sports or nothing like that. I knew the girls liked a good dancer. That was the original intention. I wanted to get the attention of females.”

These days Gerardo is besieged by female fans, many just preteens. But that attention can sometimes be too much of a good thing, even for a self-described “crazy, womanizing guy.”

There has been talk of a romance with Madonna, particularly in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine, but Gerardo denies those rumors.

“She came down to see my show at the Palace,” he said. “And that was it. Some girl dancer lied and said (Madonna) leaves messages on my machine. Nothing ever happened.

“I saw her not too long ago at her premiere,” he said, referring to her film “Truth or Dare.” “We shook hands: ‘Hi, bye.’ That was it.”

Gerardo says he has been on the receiving end of a host of movie offers now that he’s a household name for the MTV set. One of the roles that he says has caught his interest is that of Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels.

Gerardo got his first break playing a gang member in the 1988 movie “Colors.” A casting director saw him making his moves on the dance floor and asked him to audition for the part. But after that, he said, the only film roles to come his way were for gangbangers.

“After doing ‘Colors,’ I was messed up for life,” he said.

With his pinup looks and meager musical qualifications, he was also concerned initially about being stereotyped as just a wanna-be rapper.

“I was a little afraid about the black audience because that’s who started rap music, and I know they don’t want just anybody to come and take over and also mess up the whole rap situation,” he said.

“Somebody can come up with screwed-up lyrics, and just because his video looks good, he’s going to sell a million records. That’s not right. I always write my own lyrics. I think, as a rapper, people should write their own lyrics and really work hard at it.”

But he does not believe that rap music should be limited to chronicling the black experience.

“As far as being Hispanic, I use that to my advantage,” Gerardo said. “Hey, if being Hispanic is happening, that’s great, you know? Even if it wasn’t, I know my people, the Hispanic people, can still relate to me.”