URBAN DANCE SQUAD: “Life ‘N Perspectives of a Genuine Crossover”, <i> Arista</i>

When did Holland become the center of the world? This second album from Amsterdam’s Urban Dance Squad is melting-pot pop at its most melted, a combination of rap and rock styles that’s so well-woven it’s not enough to call it a hybrid. It’s more a seamless fusion in which it’s impossible to tell where the rap ends and the rock begins. It may be the most color-blind rock (or rap) ever made (see article on Page 62).

But that doesn’t mean it’s color less . Perhaps even more than last year’s debut, “Mental Floss for the Globe,” this is a vivid, energetic and compelling combo plate of modern rock’s basic ingredients and essential attitudes. Rude Boy may not be the world’s most accomplished rapper or singer, but he makes good use of his flat tones to slap at hypocrisy and bureaucracy. Tres Manos is a very accomplished guitarist, using his serious Hendrix jones as a launching point for the hard-edged metal, blues, jazz, funk and now Middle Eastern explorations that drive the band.

As with musical cousins the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there’s a vaguely surrealistic tone to the whole thing, summed up in such song titles as “(Thru) the Gates of the Big Fruit” and “Wino the Medicineman.” But then, maybe that’s just life ‘n perspective of living at the center of the world.

Rating: * * *