XCLAN; “Xodus”; <i> Polydor</i> ; * * *

Tired of rappers urging you to fight the power in the streets while they kick back in the ‘burbs counting their record royalties? Then listen up. As founders of the controversial Brooklyn black activist group Blackwatch, these microphone messengers walk their talk.

While pushing the increasing momentum of African-American self-assertion, XClan’s second album also roots in the venerable past via well-chosen “grits and greens” backing grooves taken from such master funksters as George Clinton.

After opening the record with impersonations of critics from within and without the hip-hop community, the group dismisses the jibes effectively in the rest of the tracks with fat, low-rider productions and razor-sharp rhymes of social correction. The oozing, exaggerated instructional intonations of Baba Professor X the Overseer are ingratiatingly chummy--the better to send chills down America’s spine with his bristling revolutionary stance.

Grand Verbalizer Funkin-Lesson Brother J, though more rhythmically agile, plays off the velvet-gloved steel fist shtick more predictably. Still, without the pretensions of their visuals--African walking sticks, robes, dark shades--XClan’s bull’s-eye aim on the oppressor carries weight and conviction. If only the solutions went further than a nationalistic mirror image of that oppressor.