C’Bam Puts ‘New Words’ to Rap--Literally : Music: Group accepts a challenge to put some of the 16,000 new dictionary words into a song.

Can a rap song with words like rumbustious, shambolic and ombudsperson find true happiness on MTV’s Top 10?

Can lyrics like, “So I tapped my well of diction . . . And discussed some metafiction” possibly describe what happens when a love-struck guy tries to show a girl how smart he is?

Does anybody who is not doing some really weird drug think that Ice-T is going to start rapping to the strains of--yegads!--the dictionary?

Well now, wait just a minute, says Michael Moss, composer and producer of “New Words.”

“We’re not actually looking to be taken seriously,” he says.

But Moss and the rest of C’Bam--the rapsters responsible for “New Words”--did leap at the idea of recording a song linking literacy and a good, healthy love of language. When Houghton Mifflin, publisher of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, challenged the group to come up with a song that would incorporate some of the third edition’s 16,000 new words, C’Bam took the bait.

“I thought it was an excellent idea--bringing together really good music, creating a theme and a story, and using all those words,” says Concetta, who sings the chorus on “New Words.”

Anthony Grant, the saxophonist-turned-singer who is the primary voice of “New Words,” says the group opted for a kind of “soft rap” approach, something slightly above elevator rap but bland enough to be both understandable and inoffensive.

Especially while recording such lines as, “ ‘As she dissed the dude, my lust just, well it started to roar like a floored 4-by-4.’ ” “We went through great pains to make sure you could hear every word,” Grant says.

Still, Sandy Goroff-Mailly, the Houghton-Mifflin publicity director who dreamed up the idea of a rap song to publicize the new dictionary, says she “definitely sat here like a police guard” while “New Words” was being recorded--making sure that none of the new words was also a naughty word.

At one point, her lexiconic alarms began to shriek.

“Started at my sweetie’s piggy,” she heard Anthony Grant croon--prompting Goroff-Mailly to inquire, “Pardon me, but exactly what is he referring to?”

“Sandy,” said Michael Moss, “that means her big toe.”

Diplomatically, Goroff-Mailly explains that “I tried to listen with a thoughtful and cautious ear. I wanted this song to be interesting and fun, but at the same time, I didn’t want it to be too”--Goroff-Mailly gropes for a word, something that would sound sufficiently, like, au courant --”rad,” she finally says.

Book publicist by day, Goroff-Mailly found herself turning into C’Bam’s executive producer by night. It was she, for example, who recruited Billy Aronson to do the lyrics for “New Words.”

A graduate of the Yale Drama School, Aronson had written stories for MTV and Looney Tunes cartoons. But at least among the post-”Sesame Street” set, his musical immortality was ensured when he wrote the song “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?”

Because it is not destined for general distribution, “New Words” is unlikely to make C’Bam a threat to KRS-One or any other of rap’s royalty. The song has been sent to radio stations around the country, as well as to Arsenio Hall and to Maurice Starr, the Boston pop-music mogul who created the New Kids on the Block.

Mostly, however, the song is intended to help bring attention to literacy in the music business and in the world at large.

Anthony Grant, for one, says he in no way deludes himself into thinking that “New Words” might expand the vocabulary of rap. But maybe, he says, it might teach people a few new words. His own favorite is sussing, Grant says. (“Sussing,” a word long used by English musicians, translates to “figuring out” or “sizing up,” according to its new dictionary definition.)

Concetta, who sings with him, says she likes the new word blivit, meaning “something annoying, superfluous, pointless.”

“We’re talking about using the music as a vehicle,” Moss says. “It creates a certain effect by this barrage of words.

“Rap works,” he adds, “because you can communicate a variety of ideas in a short time.”

Ear Candy

“New Words,” a rap song based on some of the 16,000 new words in the American Heritage Dictionary, was recorded in Boston to promote literacy. The first stanza:

I was sussing out a waitron

Who was chewing out a patron

Who was ragging “What’s this flavor, Miss?”

What was the dweeb, a flavorist?

The waitron waxed rumbustious

As she dissed the dude my lust just

Well it started to roar

Like a floored four-by-four

So I thought I’d ask her out

For a body-popping bout

But when I spoke I stuttered

And I sputtered what I uttered

Til I sounded all shambolic

Like a plastered alcoholic

What if she turned vitriolic?

Then my invite would be nixed

And my person eighty-sixed

But then maybe she did dig me

Cause at least she didn’t igg me