Ready for a Rap-umentary?

The transition from young sitcom star to film director isn’t an easy one.

But Brian Robbins, who for five years starred as Eric on ABC’s popular series “Head of the Class,” has made it. At 31, he is making his directorial debut with “The Show,” a grainy, black-and-white documentary offering an inside look at the lives of some of the biggest stars in rap.

“The Show,” a $2-million film that opens in limited release Friday, spends time with Notorious B.I.G., the Wu-Tang Clan, Naughty by Nature, Warren G, Run-DMC and Tha Dogg Pound.

With all the furor recently over Time Warner and rap lyrics, Robbins says, he hopes the movie will help both rap followers and naysayers gain knowledge about the musical genre that was born in the parks of New York City.

“I really wanted to give insight, not only for the fan but for the people who are curious and don’t know,” Robbins says at the new Coldwater Canyon home he shares with his longtime girlfriend, publicist Laura Cathcart. “We got to do stuff that a lot of people don’t get to do. We went to Snoop Doggy Dogg’s house and heard him talk about being in a gang. . . . We just heard the truth without anyone saying, ‘Go ahead, talk.’ I wasn’t going to censor it. You can’t curse on an MTV interview. You can’t curse on ‘Nightline.’ This was a chance for them to speak.”

Robbins says the documentary--filmed over a period of six months last year--was an idea he had kept in the back of his head for years.

“Hip-hop has been around like 15 years,” he says. “Every other music has had a film like this. Madonna had ‘Truth or Dare.’ U2 had ‘Rattle and Hum.’ Why has hip-hop not had a movie like this?”

But getting “The Show” into theaters wasn’t easy, especially since potential supporters were fearful that the project might attract only a small band of rap followers. Robbins and his partner, Mike Tollin, dragged their idea all over Hollywood for months before Rysher Entertainment and Savoy Pictures provided the financial backing.

Robbins, who earned instant legitimacy among rappers when he gained the cooperation of rap mogul Russell Simmons and veteran director Stan Lathan, says the struggle he encountered is proof that many rappers aren’t seen as having star quality. He adds that race and ignorance about the music play a role in the stereotyping.

“So many of these people are pigeonholed,” Robbins says of rap stars. “Like rappers are only supposed to appeal to people who like rap music, but they are more talented than that. I think [New York rapper] Method Man could be as big an actor as Larry Fishburne.”

The dark-haired, Brooklyn-born Robbins--who has shed his neighborhood accent after more than 10 years working as an actor--initially threw the idea at Simmons, who shrugged it off as unfeasible.

But after seeing the success of Robbins’ 1992 basketball documentary “Hardwood Dreams,” which chronicled a year in the life of Inglewood’s Morningside High School basketball team, Simmons jumped on board. “Hardwood Dreams” won, among other honors, the Crystal Heart Award at Indiana’s Heartland Film Festival.

After moving away from his friends in Sheepshead Bay to California in 1985--when his character-actor father, Floyd Levine, got a role in a movie--Robbins (then Levine) plunged into acting. He booked an agent and got bit parts on “Cagney & Lacey” and “Diff’rent Strokes” before landing an audition for “Head of the Class.”

“That just kinda happened,” Robbins says of his years on the series, which ran from 1986 to 1991. “I got the part and didn’t realize it. They put me through a long, drawn-out process, like three auditions. Then, boom, we were making a pilot. It was fun, a great learning experience. But at the same time, it prepared me for what I am doing now.”

His writing career started on a whim when he and “Class” co-star Daniel Schneider stayed up late one night in their Toluca Lake apartment building and wrote a script for the series. The producers loved it and the duo began writing for the show occasionally.

He and Schneider currently are producing “All That,” a popular sketch comedy for kids on Nickelodeon. In addition, Robbins recently created and directed a number of wacky shorts for MTV starring R&B; group TLC.

All of these projects couldn’t have developed without Robbins’ passion and eagerness to control his own projects, his partner says.

“Brian has good instincts about what works and what doesn’t,” Tollin says. “He’s down-to-earth and knows how to deal with people, when to push them and when to hold back.”

The three-year Tollin and Robbins partnership has been successful because the two men share a love of basketball, children and music. With “The Show,” they wanted to break new ground, where other rap movies like the spoofs “CB4” and “Fear of a Black Hat” failed.

“The thing for me was to make a movie for the fan,” Robbins says. “As a fan myself, I wanted to put the fan in the mix. I wasn’t trying to make a social commentary or trying to say why rap is good or bad. I just wanted to give you a slice of life and let you hear for yourself.”

Regardless of his standing as a rap junkie, convincing rappers--some of whom are distrustful of Hollywood’s depiction of them and especially of a white director crafting that image--was a difficult task for Robbins.

“I think I had one distinct advantage, stupid or not,” Robbins says. “They kinda knew me from TV in a way. They thought they knew me, even though they didn’t. So there was kind of a comfort level. Plus Russell; being down with Russell gave me instant credibility with most people.”