It’s Rap, but With a Southern Accent : Pop music: Georgia’s Arrested Development, due in Anaheim Sunday, writes from a philosophy embracing responsibility, spirituality and respect.

Much of urban rap has the reputation of being in-your-face confrontational. Anger and righteous indignation are as much a part of the musical signature as the sing-song rhyming schemes and relentless beat.

Meet Arrested Development, a band from outside Atlanta whose message is no less cutting but whose approach is more, well, Southern. Members say the group’s address has everything to do with its sound--which members have described as “Southern-fried funk”--and its philosophy, which embraces community, responsibility, spirituality and respect.

“When you’re in New York, you hear the screeching taxis and the sirens,” explained Headliner, the group’s deejay. “In the South, you’re more laid back. You can appreciate things more. It’s very spiritual--not saying that New York isn’t.”

“You’ve heard of Southern hospitality?” asked Montsho Eshe, the group’s choreographer and dancer. “In the South, it’s like a big family. Everybody knows everybody.”

Arrested Development, which opens for En Vogue at the Celebrity Theatre on Sunday, arrived early this year with a remarkably assured debut album that manages to articulate the group’s vision without sacrificing the groove. The group is one of several artists, including P.M. Dawn and Basehead, credited with reintroducing melody to hip-hop and rap.

The group uses samples of everything from vintage Coltrane to Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and borrows the refrain from Sly Stone’s “Everyday People” in its current hit, “People Everyday.” As for the message, Speech, the group’s main singer-rapper and writer, has shown no shyness in tackling issues within the African-American community as well as without.

The group’s first two singles tell much of the story. The sinuous “Tennessee” takes the narrator on a spiritual odyssey back to his family roots, to “walk the roads my forefathers walked / Climb the trees my forefathers hung from / Ask those trees for all their wisdom.”

“People Everyday” tackles the issue of mutual respect within the black community in a story of a young couple facing the taunts of a group of toughs whose “egos wanna test a brother’s manhood.”

And so it goes. “Mama’s Always on Stage” praises single mothers while calling on young fathers to take responsibility, because there “can’t be a revolution without women, can’t be a revolution without children”; “Give a Man a Fish” preaches economic self-determination in a rap built around the parable: “Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day / Teach him how to fish, and he’ll eat forever.”

In addition to selling records (the album has been on Billboard’s pop chart for 29 weeks, peaking at No. 14), Arrested Development is getting attention from some high-profile sources. Spike Lee tapped the group to write a song for his much-anticipated film on the life of Malcolm X.

The song, titled “Revolution,” will play over the closing credits and is the only rap song on the soundtrack, according to Eshe. It probably will be released as a single--Lee has directed a video of the song with the group. “At the video shoot, he worked us to death, but I liked that,” Eshe said.

Eshe (pronounced EE-shee) is one of two women in the five-member band, and she’s quick to take exception with the treatment of women in many rap lyrics.

“I wish people would stop . . . . If young females hear that (derogatory language) all the time, that’s what they’re going to think of themselves,” she said. “It’s really sad that a lot of groups dis (disrespect) women. We’ve been the backbone of the black family for ages, (and) we’ve never gotten the respect that we deserve.”

Eshe is cheered by the rise of female rappers--”I like that; it shows strength”--and takes pride on her own group’s stance: “We don’t dis women. I wouldn’t be in the group if there was any dissing of women. The women (in the group) have just as much status as the men, and we work just as hard, sometimes harder.”

While mention of religion is virtually verboten in rock (with the sometime-exception of U2), Arrested Development extends a growing trend in popular black music (which includes Prince and P.M. Dawn) in invoking the name of God.

The group does blast the Baptist Church in the song “Fishin’ 4 Religion” (“They’re praising a God that watches you weep / And doesn’t want you to do a damn thing about it”), but the overall theme of spirituality, tied in with community, is a thread that weaves through the entire album.

As for the stage show itself, “It’s just a lot of energy. It’s a real hype show. We just go out and have fun,” Eshe said. “We feed off making other people feel good.”

En Vogue and Arrested Development will perform Sunday at 6 and 9:30 p.m. at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. $25. (714) 999-9536.