Making It in the Macho Rap World : Conscious Daughters, who some call the best female group in the genre, steers clear of violent, sexist topics while keeping crucial ‘street quality.’

“Rap is a man’s world and for women rappers it’s sometimes a hostile world--where you have to walk on eggshells,” says Karryl Smith of Conscious Daughters, which many consider the best female rap group to emerge in the ‘90s. “Sometimes it’s like working with the enemy.”

The vast majority of hit rappers and their audiences is male and often seems to thrive on one of the favorite pastimes in rap circles: female-bashing.

“You can’t let that bother you,” says Smith, who, with partner Carla Green, recently had a huge hit with “Something You Can Ride to (Fonky Expedition)”--one of the biggest hits ever by a female rap group.

“When guys use the word bitch , I don’t get too upset,” she says. “It’s just a word.”

Isn’t that just a rationale?

“Not really--but you do things you have to do to survive in this business,” Smith says. “I’d like men to use nice, respectful terms for women but they don’t--and probably never will. We use the word bitch on our record too. It works in the context of our music. But there’s uglier things in rap than men calling women disrespectful names.”

The two 26-year-old women, who come from the Oakland area, steer clear of those uglier things--like the excessive violence in gangsta rap. But their music, though generally positive, isn’t exactly wholesome. Their debut album on Scarface/Priority Records, “Ear to the Street,” is nowhere near as extreme as the music of some other female rappers, but it does include some crude language and images.

“There’s a street quality to what we do--you need that,” Smith explains. “If you don’t use the same language the kids use, they won’t want to hear your music. The problem is that they won’t be able to relate to it.”

Smith knows how crucial that aspect is.

“I got into rap when I was about 10 because I could relate to what they were saying,” she recalls. “Rap was just starting then but it had something no other music had. Black kids can relate to rap better than any other music because it’s talking about what happens in their community.”

When Smith and Green got mesmerized by rap back in the early ‘80s, they were high school students in El Cerrito, near Berkeley. Though they branched out into other areas, their passion for rap never waned. Both are 5-foot-10, and Smith made use of her height playing basketball at San Francisco State, where she majored in radio broadcasting. Green has been working in the computer business, developing software for computer games. On the side, though, they were building the foundation for a rap career.

“We were hanging out at clubs working on our rapping and writing and looking for a break,” Smith says. “We wanted to be rappers in the worst way.”

Before ever recording an album, they had some minor successes, including an opening slot on a tour headlined by the group Fu-Schnickens. But their big break came at a party in 1991 where they met Paris, a prominent rapper who was looking to sign artists for his Scarface label.

Paris, who produced their debut album, was impressed by both their rap skills and their writing ability. He gave them free rein--within certain limits.

“I wouldn’t put anything out that was excessively violent or had a lot of negative images of the black community,” he explains in a separate interview. “There are some references here and there to things like that--but it’s not a major theme of the songs.”

Conscious Daughters, Paris insists, offer an honesty and reality missing from the work of what he calls the “fake” rappers.

“A lot of record companies are putting together a bunch of pretty faces for hip-hop albums and have other people write all their music,” Paris says. “It’s not real and the fans know it. That’s why a lot of these female rappers fail.”

Smith, though, points to another reason.

“These female rappers rap about stuff men don’t want to hear about,” she says. “We avoid doing that. Sure, we have songs geared to women, but there are so many male rap fans we don’t want to turn them off. “What we don’t do is shake our butts and flirt and tease and show men what we can do for them in bed,” Smith explains. “That’s the bimbo way. We can get our messages across and still maintain our dignity as women.”