Rapping the Record Pirates : Crime: A $400-million-a-year loss spurs Ice Cube and the music industry to tackle a nationwide counterfeiting problem.

Ice Cube, star of the hot “Boyz N the Hood” movie, is known on record for his angry urban commentaries.

In recent years, he has gone after some familiar villains: drug dealers, corrupt police, pimps, prostitutes.

But many of the Los Angeles rapper’s fans were probably caught off guard by the target of his recent video for “Jackin’ for Beats”: record counterfeiters.

In the video, which features a song from his controversial “Kill at Will” extended-play album, Cube and cohorts hunt down a group of shady merchants selling counterfeit rap tapes and attack them.

It’s no joke.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America--a trade group whose members produce, manufacture and distribute about 90% of all domestic pop music--estimates that record piracy costs the record industry more than $400 million a year in lost artist royalties and manufacturer sales.

The fake tapes--usually featuring horrible sound quality and shoddy graphics--are sold regularly at swap meets, flea markets and on street corners for about a third of the suggested $9 retail price of their legitimate counterparts.

“Counterfeiting is one of the most serious threats facing the music industry,” said Paul Smith, president of Sony Music Distribution, one of the two largest record distributors in the country. “In some instances, more copies of our rap records are being sold by street vendors than in the stores.”

Last Tuesday, police seized more than 38,000 allegedly counterfeit cassettes during a raid on a distribution site in Los Angeles. Authorities in Montebello and Costa Mesa also confiscated 43,200 such tapes last month.

While Southern California has long held the dubious distinction of being the counterfeit tape capital of the United States, the problem appears to be escalating nationally.

The Los Angeles raids are but the latest in an aggressive 12-month sweep in which the FBI and law-enforcement agencies around the nation--in conjunction with the recording industry association investigators--have confiscated more than 1 million counterfeit tapes.

Lobbying efforts by the recording association also contributed to the recent upgrading of penalties for piracy in 21 states from a misdemeanor to a felony. Last year, the trade group’s efforts helped pave the way for 91 convictions under federal and state piracy codes.

“Counterfeiting is not a victimless crime,” said Steven F. D’Onofrio, recording association senior vice president and director of anti-piracy operations. “Artists, writers, producers and record companies are getting ripped off and so are consumers. People who pay less for these products are under the impression that they are purchasing close-outs, but what they end up owning is cheap, terrible-sounding tapes that cannot be returned.”

In recent years, rap, dance and Latino music have become the most frequent target of counterfeiters.

As a result, a loose coalition of rappers has joined with executives from 14 independent record labels to form Artists Against Counterfeit Tapes, a street-oriented, nonprofit organization that has been cooperating with the recording industry association in private investigations since last fall.

Fred Munao, founder of the coalition and president of New York-based Select Records, said his biggest fear is that many of the mom-and-pop stores that independent labels rely on to test-market new rap and dance acts may be driven out of business by bogus tape dealers.

To combat the problem, both organizations have instituted a program to provide independent record-store owners with accurate details of local anti-piracy statutes to help them bust street vendors who market counterfeit tapes in their vicinity.

Fender Memorial: The late Clarence Leo Fender, the Orange County inventor who revolutionized pop music when he developed the solid-body electric guitar, the Telecaster, in 1950, would have been 82 on Aug. 10. To mark the occasion, more than a dozen guitarists will join in a benefit salute to Fender at 4 p.m. next Saturday at the Bren Events Center on the UC Irvine campus.

The lineup for the eight-hour event includes James Burton, Yngwie Malmsteen, Albert Lee, Jeff Berlin, Dick Dale, Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, Vivian Campbell, Gary Myrick, Randy Hansen, Dweezil Zappa, Tim Bogert, Thomas McRocklin and Force of Souls. Proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Parkinson’s Educational Program in Newport Beach.

“Leo was the Henry Ford of guitar,” said Leland Jeffries, a friend of the Fender family who is staging the event. “He was a genius whose enormous influence on guitar music is recognized world-wide.”

Fender died March 21.